


I'll Be Your Mirror

by UairSanRaith



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 21:18:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12021192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UairSanRaith/pseuds/UairSanRaith
Summary: Overwatch has been recalled, and Fareeha Amari finds herself at Watchpoint: Gibraltar with a new occupation, new responsibilities, and a whole new struggle in her mother's shadow. It doesn't exactly help when Vishkar send one Satya Vaswani, the singularly most intolerable woman she's ever met, to judge the ranks.Or: How Pharah and Symmetra come to fight for Overwatch, and very gradually fall in love in the process.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya, thanks for clicking through! This fic is my first multi-chapter work, intended as practice for writing narrative arcs and, more importantly, to get me writing on a consistent schedule again. What I'm saying is, I'm rusty, and thank you in advance for bearing with me.   
> Rating is set as Mature for canon-typical violence, non-explicit sex scenes and recovery from emotional abuse, which will pop up in later chapters. I'd like to stress that I do NOT write major character deaths or abusive ships, and each chapter will have relevant content warnings. 
> 
> Thanks again for reading! I adore these nerds.

Blip. Blip. Blip.

_Fareeha cracked an eye open, cursing her alarm. She squashed her face further into the pillow, growled, feeling like she slept for about two hours._

Blip. Blip. Blip.

_She sat up on the cheap futon, rubbed an eye as her vision adjusted to the darkness that still cloaked the living room. She turned to the glowing numbers of her clock: 1:34am._

Blip. Blip. Blip.

_That wasn’t her alarm, either._

_Her weary brain rattled through the possibilities – fire? No. Carbon monoxide? Doubtful... She slid out of bed, pulled her boxers down her thighs, scratched her armpit through her baggy t-shirt._

_Fareeha padded to the kitchen, the bathroom, then checked the closets – exhausted every possibility before she was forced to admit that the sound was coming from the bedroom. Her mother’s bedroom._

Blip. Blip. Blip.

_She hadn’t entered the room since mum had passed, and she’d inherited the apartment. The door gave a long, accusing creak. She refused to turn on the light, allowing the darkness to hide Ana Amari’s personal belongings, still exactly where she had left them. The bedroom still smelled of her – a tart hint of hibiscus tea, and the earthy patchouli of her favourite perfume._

BLIP. BLIP. BLIP.

_Yeah, it was in here all right. Fareeha waited for another insistent ring, and let the sound lead her to a chest of drawers on the far side of the room. She followed it to the bottom drawer, squatted down to gingerly dig through its contents, feeling through old newspaper cuttings, a hat, some jewellery._

_A persistent orange blink finally cut through the darkness._

_Fareeha held the tiny communicator between her thumb and forefinger. It lacked any kind of branding, not even a manufacturer’s logo, but the grey sheen and orange accent of its light was instantly recognisable._

_She stood upright, heat rising her to the tips of her ears as her chest thudded. She inserted the comm into her ear, pressing her thumb against it to answer._

_The sound of muffled activity, and something like a bunch of jars being knocked over. Then, a familiar voice, too gruff to be human, “Ana?!”_

_“No,” She swallowed dryly, her shoulders squaring into a posture too dignified for her crumpled t-shirt and shorts, “Fareeha.”_

 

_*******_

 

“Good morning, agents!” Winston ambles into the meeting room at Watchpoint Gibraltar, making his way around the agents who already sit at the table, chattering and yawning over coffee. The gorilla clutches a haphazard bundle of files to his chest as he uses one set of knuckles to walk, greeting each agent as he passes. He reaches his empty seat, next to Fareeha, who offers a smile and a nod. He looks nervous.

The ape settles on his chair with a hefty sigh. He places both palms, gigantic and black, flat on the table’s surface as he surveys the agents before him. His yellow eyes sparkle with anticipation. Fareeha follows his gaze to the other recruits.

There’s a stark divide. The elders (Reinhardt, Tobjorn, Angela) sit together, apart from the two new recruits (Lucio Correia dos Santos, Hana Song). Lena “Tracer” Oxton, ever the social bridge, sits between both groups, legs crossed under her as she sways from side to side.

The trickle of arrivals over the past week had done nothing to help Fareeha figure out where she fit into this dynamic. Overwatch veterans had been greeted with tearful reunions, while Lúcio and Hana had already met over social media. She looks at each group – not a retired Overwatch agent, not a newbie sought through incredible feats of heroism. Her presence feels more like nepotism.

“Agents,” Winston takes his palms from the table top, adjusts his glasses with one hand as he opens a file with the other, “It’s my pleasure to welcome you as official agents of the new Overwatch team. A- “He’s interrupted by a whoop from Lena, quiet applause from a few others, “Hah, thanks. An email has been sent with your IDs and security details. Memorise them. They provide access to Athena’s communication system, instant messaging, all that. Second, I have your new communicators.” He pulls a box file from his substantial mound of paperwork, opens it, scoops out a bunch of small plastic bags to dispense to the team.

A small flurry of activity follows – crackles of six plastic bags being opened at once, then the younger recruits exclaiming over their new Overwatch-issued comms.

“Overwatch Agent Lucio, checkin’ in with _the_ Tracer!” Lucio looks positively thrilled with his new ID code and communicator, eyes sparkling as he bounces in his seat, “Can you hear me?”

“Hey, I can hear you!” Hana exclaims next to him, “Loud and clear! What is your status, Agent?”

“Agent Lucio is scheduled for speed training with Agent Tracer at 1100 hours, an arsekicking at 1110” Tracer sniggers.

Winston sighs as he shuffles his unread paperwork, muttering glumly to Fareeha, “Maybe shouldn’t have given them the gadgets first.”

She shoots him back a sympathetic smile as she eagerly investigates her own communicator.

“Back to business,” Winston continues eventually, “Guys? Guys, listen! Uh, it’s all been fun and games the past week, getting to know one another, but it’s time to get serious.” The bustle around the table simmers down, “First point of call, Athena’s looked at our budgetary status, and it’s not good.”

Angela, in the middle of retying her hair, pipes up, “Define ‘not good’?”

“Well. Two things,” Winston mutters, “First off, utility budgets are pretty small. The UN sanctions enough electricity and hot water for one gorilla and his faithful AI unit here,” He motions to Athena’s logo on the screen behind him, “A vast increase is raising suspicion. I have excuses lined up, but we need to make a serious effort to curtail any excess. As of today, you’ll be sharing dorms and using the communal washrooms in the training centre.”

“Ach, this is dull!” Reinhardt growls, having grown restless in his chair, “When do we go save the world?”

“S-second issue regarding budget,” Winston pushes his glasses up his nose, only for them to slide back down, “And to go off Reinhardt’s point… We can’t fight with the budget we’re on right now. We just can’t. The travel, the security, the supplies… We’re bringing in a third party to get us back on our feet.”

Hesitant murmurs rumble across the round table. Fareeha leans forward, elbows on the table top, fingers tapping her lips. Reinhardt looks as though he regrets even asking.

Winston clears his throat. “A representative from Vishkar will be joining us in the next two days.”

Angela merely blinks in disbelief, “Vishkar? Is this a joke?”

“Well, that was a nice thought while it lasted,” Lúcio sighs, “But if Vishkar come here I gotta split.”

“Guys,” Winston sighs, “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to. We need money, and they have it. We need _allies_ , and they’re willing to be one.”

“Yeah, at what cost?” Tracer asks.

Torbjorn shakes his head, “From what I know of Vishkar? Our souls.”

“Nah, they got no use for _souls_ , trust me.” Lucio stares sullenly at his grey and orange comm, now taken out of his ear and placed far away from him on the table.

The agents continue to complain. Hana wants to know exactly what the problem is with Vishkar, and Lúcio is more than willing to indulge her. Reinhardt and Torbjorn roar at each other, then at Winston. Lena and Angela merely air their disgust to everyone and no one.

Fareeha puts her head in her hands. This is the worst-case scenario, from the snippets of information she can glean from Winston’s thin protests: a Vishkar Architech, on site, examining protocol, evaluating agents…

But Winston is right. They need any ally they can get. They need someone who can pay for them to travel _and_ for authorities to turn the other cheek. The previous Overwatch was funded through taxation, at least officially. With it now illegal for these people to even be in the same room as each other, this is the only way it can happen. She isn’t naïve, knew this would never be the Overwatch she grew up in, knew the world would throw up massive obstacles, but this…

The protests have risen to shouts, and not just from Reinhardt. Fareeha raises her head. In front of her, six agents hurl complaints towards their new Commander, even if he refuses to call himself such. A streak of fury suddenly cuts through her.

Fareeha stands. She slams a fist on the table top.

Silence.

“Look at yourselves!” She barks, conscious of the shake in her voice, “You call yourselves Overwatch, but you shout over your own superior like this? Some of you worked under Jack, and my mother. You wouldn’t _dare_! I know, I was there! Yet you bicker like children without even letting Winston explain his decisions on day one?”

Angela attempts to speak up, but Fareeha holds up a stiff finger, warns her with a sharp glare. Not done, “It’s true, we’re not in the old Overwatch, and we’re not in our old armies. But Winston is our leader. He would not make a decision without running through it, again and again, looking for holes and flaws. And if any of you have a better suggestion than his, I’d _love_ to hear it. But somehow I don’t think a charity car wash is gonna fix this.”

Fareeha flops back in her seat, folds her arms as she stares sullenly around the table. The silence afterwards unnerves her enough to rake her fingers through her hair, flicking back a row of gold beads, “I’m sorry, just. Go on.”

Tracer scrapes her chair closer to the table, clasps her hands in front of her, eyes lowered, “Sorry, Winston. Go on, love.”

The others follow suit with mumbled apologies.

Winston, scratching the fur under his chin, reaches for his briefing and clears his throat. “Athena, run the sideshow on our security plans, please.”

 

*****

 

“What?” Fareeha stands in front of Winston after the inaugural meeting, as the other agents file out, “Say…say that again?”

“Second in Command,” Winston repeats simply. He gathers his papers, stuffs them in a folder. The only guy in the 2070s still using hard copies, Fareeha thinks.

“I don’t get it,”

“Fareeha, I was never meant to be the Commander of this organisation,” Winston mutters, “I didn’t train for this. You, on the other hand…you’re a born leader. You led in the army, you led at Helix, and you led them, today, in that mess of a meeting.”

“Winston, I…” Fareeha shakes her head, shields her eyes with her hands, as if the request is too bright to be faced directly, “I don’t know, I really…really don’t know.”

“I think it’d be a mistake to say no.”

“Just. Give me a few days, okay? Let me think about it.”

“Okay. Take your time.” Winston gathers his papers to his chest, leaning on one fist as he turns to face her, “But the Vishkar Architech arrives in two days, and those guys will need all the direction they can get.”

Fareeha walks out of the meeting room into the strong May sun. She sighs heavily, takes a pair of aviator shades from her jeans pocket, slips them on as she decides to take the long way back to the living quarters. The meeting took them until nearly noon, as Winston gave them as much information as possible on this Architech woman – Vaswani – and her role.

The sun bakes into the rock, the tarmac, Fareeha’s skin. It’s nowhere near as hot as Cairo, but it still helps to calm her as she thinks of the Overwatch agents still AWOL after the recall. The meeting ended on status briefings of some absentees - Genji, who had apparently answered in Nepal and muttered something about unfinished business. Jesse, who merely pressed answer before disappearing off the face of the earth once more. She tips her head up into the warmth, feeling the sun at its highest point. _High noon_. _Be careful out there, asshole._

The stress of the meeting melts away to reveal raw embarrassment. Fareeha replays it in her mind as she sidles along the cliffside back to her dorm – raising her voice, taking her own elders to task like misbehaving children in math class. A shudder of shame rattles her – as though Reinhardt, Torbjorn and Angela didn’t fight alongside her own mother? As if she had any right to speak in such a way, having never been allowed to join Overwatch in the first place? She remembers Angela blinking with disbelief at the way Fareeha held up her finger to shush her, and the silence that descended over the table.

Mortification ripples through her, and her pace back to the living quarters quickens. Winston seriously wants _her_ as second in command after that? Maybe if she gets back to her dorm fast enough, she can pack and get out of here before she faces anyone else.

No such luck. Fareeha arrives back at her dorm to find Hana Song attempting to lug an enormous pink suitcase through the door.

“D’you get the memo?” The younger woman asks as Fareeha takes the case’s bottom end and helps her lift it inside, “Every new member has to share with an old one.”

“You know I’m not an old member of Overwatch, right?” Fareeha deposits the case next to the bed, her previous determination to flee dissipating like smoke, “My mother was. I just split my time between her and my dad.”

She goes to the dorm’s tiny, single window and opens it to let in some air, suddenly aware of the natural messiness of an unshared dorm. She leans against the wall, folding her arms as she regards the younger woman. Hana had been the first newbie, flying in with her MEKA in tow, holding her own against Torbjorn’s complaints and Reinhardt’s loudness with striking confidence and wit. Fareeha had liked her instantly. “Tracer could teach you more about working for Overwatch than me.”

“Tracer and Lucio decided they wanna share. Something about gay solidarity,” Hana replies, rolling her bright, brown eyes. Fareeha smirks despite herself. “I think they just didn’t wanna bunk with someone who streams at 3am. Besides…maybe I think you’re pretty cool.”

Fareeha continues to watch as Hana inspects the wall above her cot, finds the handle in which to pull out a top bunk. She drags it out before hoisting herself up. She bounces her tiny frame on the mattress to test it, swings her legs in their galaxy-print leggings, “Like this morning, y’know? You don’t take any shit.”

“The less said about that, the better. I’m kind of embarrassed, to be honest.”

“Okay, I won’t push it. I can stay with you though, right?”

“Yeah,” Fareeha pushes off the wall, begins to tidy the small room of clothes left draped here and there, “Keep it up with the compliments though, or you’re out on your ass.”

She stuffs dirty workout clothes in her hamper, and moves belongings from one of the nightstands to give Hana her share of storage space. Mainly framed photos – family snaps that Fareeha refuses to travel without. She carefully positions each frame so no photo is obscured.

They’re mundane, really: newborn Fareeha held by her mother, still young at twenty-eight, obviously exhausted from labour but radiating pure joy. Fareeha’s father, when his hair was still sable-black and long, arms around the two, protective. Another picture, (Fareeha around five this time) all three grinning together against the backdrop of the mountains surrounding Vancouver. A third, with Fareeha as a pre-teen, hair already braided into her gold rings, wriggling in the arms of her mum. Ana Amari is in her off-duty clothes of a black turtleneck and jeans. Two men sit on the sofa opposite, craning their necks to face the camera – a gangly teen in a cowboy hat and kerchief gives a half-hearted fingergun, while an older man with dark skin and scars across his face smiles warmly over a coffee mug. Fareeha holds this photo the longest, placing two fingertips on the flat print of her mother’s face. A face by then a far cry from the dewy young woman at Fareeha’s birth, but now marked with wrinkles, not all of them laugh-lines. She sports a thin smile and a stiff posture that suggests stress.

“Hey,” Hana pipes up. Fareeha starts, having forgot she was even there.

“What?”

“You okay?”

“Mmm,” Fareeha sets the frame on her nightstand with a _clunk_ , turns to smile at the younger woman. Hana’s large eyes search her face, obviously wondering whether to bring up the topic.

A pause. “Your mom was a huge hero of mine, y’know,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! When I was in MEKA I read that biography they wrote of her, you know the one? It’s kinda weird seeing her in photos like that, in jeans, just hanging out like anyone else.”

Fareeha moves to her own bed below Hana, sitting on the spongey mattress, crouching over so her head can tuck under the ceiling of the new upper bunk. She hugs her arms around herself, shifts onto her back, “She wasn’t just anyone else, you’re right.”

 

*****

 

Thankfully for Fareeha, nobody at dinner makes any mention of her outburst this morning. The agents share a subdued meal. Vishkar comes up in the conversation, of course, but no more arguments are had. Angela clucks her annoyance, but concedes that nanobiotic medicine doesn’t come cheap. Lucio informs them he’ll stay, should Winston provide enough protection. Reinhardt, to Fareeha’s eternal gratitude, insists they discuss last night’s episode of _The Bachelor_ instead. She takes that as her cue to leave, apologetically slipping back to her room for an early night.

She wakes before 6am the next morning, spends a good half-hour or so lying in bed, staring at the photos that had been relocated to the nightstand. Her eyes settle on that photo with her mother and the two smiling men. _Why can’t just one of you be here? Why me instead? I’m not Overwatch material._

_Tell me what to do._

A grim malaise falls over her – time to go work out.

After a punchbag session so brutal that Athena has to sharply urge her to stop, Fareeha admits defeat and trudges her way back to the living quarters. The effects of hard exercise pulse through her body, a welcome rush, but one that does nothing to quell the rotten thoughts. Her mother dominates – her smoky voice seeps through, berates her for even considering taking Winston up on that offer. Mum was strict, and stern because she had to be, but Fareeha can’t remember if her voice had really held so much venom. It’s getting difficult to remember how her voice actually sounded, without thinking hard about it.

Fareeha takes the towel from her shoulders to dab at her soggy face and neck, then sighs as she remembers – the private dorm showers have been cut off. She curses herself, but decides not to turn back. She needs breakfast.

Signs of life can be heard around the Watchpoint now – she walks under the kitchen windows, where Reinhardt’s booming voice practically rattles the glass. He’ll be getting started on his usual massive platters of bacon and eggs. Tracer’s chatter can be heard around the other side of the satellite buildings, as well as a peal of laughter from Angela: the usual group of girls on their morning run.

She’s just dragging her tired limbs up the hill to the landing strip when another sound catches her ear – like beating wings, or…

“Chopper!” Winston’s hulking mass leaps out from the lab. He lands next to Fareeha, shaking the ground enough to almost make her lose balance, “We’re compromised! All agents on defence, _IMMEDIATELY._ ”

“I can’t see anything,” Fareeha shields her eyes from the fierce morning light as she scans skies above, “Shit, my suit’s back in training.”

“There!” Fareeha's gaze follows where Winston points up – sure enough, rounding the comm tower, a small helicraft is judging a descent. Fareeha has to look away as the sun glints painfully against its white chassis – by the time the spots in her eyes clear, the craft has landed in front of them, propellers beginning to slow. A blue, V-shaped logo shines out at her from the aircraft’s side.

Vishkar.

Fareeha glances at Winston, who looks back helplessly: _Weren’t they meant to come tomorrow?_ Winston hastily thumbs his comm, “Disregard, agents. Disregard.”

“God damn it, not even 8 in the mornin’ and you’re yankin’ us.” Torbjorn growls over the comms.

The aircraft opens with a short, harsh hiss. A figure emerges, descends a ramp made of hard-light that forms at her feet with every efficient step. She wears a form-fitting white and lavender tunic with bootcut pants. A silver headset with an orange visor frames a dark complexion, with black hair twisted into a severe updo. The woman approaches Winston and Fareeha, towing a white trunk behind her. She waves away the helicraft, which makes no hesitation in snapping its cockpit closed and starting its propellers to leave.

The woman makes no attempt at niceties, simply stares through the gap between the two Overwatch agents as she waits patiently for the noise of the departing aircraft to clear. For just a second, her catlike eyes, amber behind her visor, give Fareeha a once-over that make her far too aware of her sweaty sports bra and mussed hair.

“Architech Satya Vaswani, representing the Vishkar Corporation.” Her eyes flit from Fareeha to Winston, “I trust you made preparations for my arrival.”

“Uh, wow. This is awkward, but,” Winston reaches out a paw to offer a handshake, which Vaswani accepts with a second’s hesitation, “We had you arranged to arrive tomorrow.”

Vaswani pulls her hand from Winston’s as if it had suddenly turned white hot. She raises her left arm – which Fareeha now realises is a prosthetic, white and illuminated with cyan lights – and exposes her palm to reveal a glowing blue disc in its centre. From it, she pulls a monthly calendar made of hard-light, that floats in the space between the three of them. A little blue Overwatch logo hovers firmly over the day’s date – May twenty-fifth. She continues to hold the virtual calendar in the air. Silent. Ready for an answer.

“I see a wire’s been crossed,” Winston mutters, scratching his chin and peering into the logo.

Vaswani snaps the calendar away. It shatters into chilly blue shards, like snowflakes. “The Vishkar Corporation does not make mistakes.”

Fareeha can’t help but give a derisive snort, “Could’ve given us a heads-up, though. Had us ready to attack when we heard you coming.”

The other woman’s sharp eyes are back on her, boring into her.

“M-Ms Vaswani, this is Agent Amari.”

The woman’s gaze flits the entire length of Fareeha’s body again. Making her feel hot and exposed, even more so than greeting a stranger in a sweaty bra top and shorts already would, “Not at all what I expected from Overwatch’s famous captain.”

“Funny, you’re exactly what I expected from a morally bankrupt corporation.” Fareeha replies as she scrapes back the hair plastered to her forehead, her heat rising. She notes how the woman’s lips purse in displeasure at her retort, but never lose the definition of their cupid’s bow. A shame, that someone so pretty would be in with such a bad crowd.

Winston, meanwhile, clears his throat with discomfort, “Captain Amari passed away some time ago. Fareeha is her daughter.”

Vaswani’s eyes flick the length of Fareeha again. A thick, arched eyebrow twitches in…amusement? Disdain? Both?

Fareeha’s cheek pulses, “Thought Vishkar doesn’t make mistakes?”

Vaswani opens her mouth to answer, but Winston jumps in ahead, “Fareeha, why don’t we take our guest inside? Find someone to show her around?”

Fareeha spots Angela, Tracer and Hana jogging up to the landing strip, no doubt to check out the new arrival. She jams a thumb in the doctor’s direction, turning back the way she’d come, “Ange can do that better than me. I…I need a shower.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I really didn't mean to go nearly a whole month before updating chapter 2, but the new school year hit me with a bang! I'll work harder to get chapter 3 out much sooner. I'm really excited about the things I have planned for this fic. 
> 
> Also shout out to Eva for looking over this with a fresh eye!

“So you’re telling me mum _literally_ twisted Jack Morrison’s ear?”

 

“Hand on heart, she did,” Reinhardt replies, clapping a meaty hand over his chest, “The man was squealing like a pig! Right there at the UN headquarters!”

 

They’re near the peak of Gibraltar rock, perched on wind-whipped rocks overlooking the strait, sharing chicken salad sandwiches. The knight had asked for her help checking for spy drones - Fareeha sprung at the chance to avoid the Vishkar woman who had arrived that morning.

 

“I thought Gabriel would wet himself! Ah…of course, she would never do that once she had to deal with Commander Morrison. Amaris are quite the sticklers for the old hierarchy, eh?”

 

Fareeha glances up from her sandwich. Reinhardt regards her with his one good eye, pale and glinting in the sunlight.

 

She takes a dry swallow, “Guess I learned from the best.”

 

She looks out at the sea below them. The sun glitters against the waves so strongly at this hour, it’s enough to hurt her eyes even through her shades. She shivers at the high winds that whip her hair, stuffs one hand in the pocket of her leather jacket. “Reinhardt, can I ask you a question?”

 

The knight gives an agreeable grunt as he takes a mammoth bite from his own lunch.

 

“When you were figuring out the ranks…why didn’t you become a captain, or… Is this rude? I feel like I’m being rude.”

 

Reinhardt throws back his head, lets loose a roar of laughter loud enough to scare off a nearby group of gulls, “Come on, Fareeha! Yes, I was offered Captain.”

 

Fareeha glances up, “You were?”

 

“Well, we decided between us. We agreed Ana would be best.”

 

“Why’d you turn it down?”

 

“Ach…” Reinhardt tears off a chunk of bread, flicking it in the direction of the gulls he’d just disturbed. The two of them watch as the birds squabble over it, “Some people lead from towers. Others lead on the ground. And I have always been a man who leads on the ground.”

 

“Overwatch leaders were often on the ground.” Fareeha replies. _Dead on the ground, shot through the skull._

 

“What I mean is, I have never been a man to make the kind of decisions Jack, Gabriel, and your mother did. My strengths are supporting peers, not delegating.”

 

“I see,” Fareeha picks at her crust, throwing it to the gulls as well. She can feel the old man’s eye still on her.

 

“You want to know whether you’re captain material.”

 

Fareeha looks up, finds him offering a crinkling smile that isn’t unkind. He laughs again, “You’ll find it’s hard to keep secrets in an Overwatch Watchpoint.”

 

~

 

A meeting is called at 1800 that evening. Vaswani sits with Winston, face impassive, giving only cursory glances as the agents file in.

 

Fareeha drops into a seat between Torbjorn and Lúcio as she takes the opportunity to get another look at Vaswani. Much as it pains her to admit it, the woman is pretty, with sleek eyes framed by queenly, arched brows, an aquiline nose and cupid’s bow lips. Not just pretty – she’s _beautiful_.

 

“Thank you all for meeting with us,” Vaswani has risen to her feet now. She sweeps her forelock of black hair from her visor with a quick toss of her head. Her gaze falls to the table. For a woman with such self-assured tone, she certainly doesn’t seem confident enough to meet their eyes. “I have met all of you individually, but I wanted to lay out Vishkar’s plans in a more formal setting.”

 

Small grunts of acknowledgement. Vaswani raises her cybernetic palm, pulling a hard-light rectangle scrawled with notes from its glowing disk. Fareeha roughly crosses her arms and shifts in her chair as she tries not to notice how the blue light bounces off Vaswani’s dark skin, highlighting her regal cheekbones.

 

“I will be inspecting the Watchpoint top to bottom. Living quarters, laboratory, hangar, armoury. It is important for me to assess the condition of accommodation and equipment, and report back to my superiors.”

 

Concerned murmurs. A snort from Torbjorn, “And we’re expected to let you poke around our weapons, eh?”

 

Vaswani’s eyes narrow. There’s another haughty flick of her hair, “This was all agreed in the preliminary contract Winston signed.”

 

“Um, _non-binding_ contract,” Winston interjects, “Nothing set in stone.”

 

“Right.” Vaswani sniffs, unbothered, “At any rate, Winston informs me you have a group training session on Monday, which I will be evaluating. I will be assessing team performance for the six weeks I am here.”

 

“Question,” Tracer pipes up, “Will you be tagging along on missions, too?”

 

Vaswani shoots her a venomous gaze, as if she had interrupted with a loud fart, “That is entirely situational, dependent on the danger of the mission.”

 

Lúcio tuts, staring sullenly at his folded arms, “Wouldn’t want her to fall out the chopper or anything.” He earns an admonishing nudge from Angela.

 

“At the end of six weeks,” Vaswani concludes, “My superiors will decide how to take our partnership further. If at all.” She snaps the virtual notepad back into her palm, “Dismissed.”

 

The agents exchange glances across the table, surprised by the abruptness. Winston frowns, “Not taking questions?”

 

“There are no more questions to be asked. I have made it all quite clear. If you will excuse me.” With that, Vaswani gives a curt nod and marches from the room.

 

~

 

The five days between Vaswani’s meeting and the simulation pass quickly enough. The agents spend their days training together, gaining deeper understandings of each other’s abilities. Fareeha and Angela find their different forms of flight particularly complimentary, often spending entire training sessions bouncing in the air, laughing, high above the other agents. Training in the new Overwatch feels more like learning through play – testing each other’s abilities through horsing around, seeing what fits and what doesn’t.

 

More than once, Fareeha spots Vaswani on the ledge overlooking the training range. She always stands straight, hands clasped in front of her, watching the agents as they race and dodge another’s fire. Stony-faced. Forever unimpressed. She never stays for long – Fareeha would look away for a minute, and Vaswani would be gone the next. There’s a thread of disappointment each time the other woman leaves - an odd sense of deflation, as if showing off in her Raptora suit had been the entire point.

 

“Fareeha!” Angela had called across to her in the sky once, “Could you _at least_ watch where you’re going with that rocket launcher?”

 

“Huh? Uh, just training myself to look for snipers, Ange.” Fareeha felt a hotness rise from her neck, as if she’d been caught peeking at something she shouldn’t.

 

Angela gave a curt laugh in reply. “Best to get into the habit, eh?”

 

“Well. We’re like clay pigeons up here.” Fareeha had muttered back, beginning a slow descent. Suddenly hyperaware of her height, she was consumed by a great need to feel her feet on the ground.

 

Vaswani never joins them for dinner, nor their evenings in the common room. If she eats, it must be in her own dorm, as Fareeha never once bumps into her in the kitchen. It’s not for lack of invitation – Tracer and Hana regularly invite her to join them, and pursue conversation whenever their paths cross. While they don’t seem to get much small talk out of her, it’s apparently enough for Tracer to reveal to Fareeha that the water in Vaswani’s dorm has not been cut off. Fine by her – having to make nice with the Vishkar lady in just a towel would be too awkward to handle. It’s also fine by her that Vaswani actively avoids their company outside of meetings. Lúcio is jumpy and distracted, convinced her very presence is a threat to him. He now keeps his sonic amplifier locked away in his room, and refuses to even go outside without at least one buddy.

 

“Kidnapping,” He had grumbled to Fareeha one morning, picking sullenly at his fruit plate, “Vishkar specialise in that crap. Usually it’s kids – they find a gifted child in a poor area, they bribe the family, promising a better life. But if the parents refuse? They always get what they want, let me put it that way.”

 

He shook his head and stabbed a cube of melon, “For all Winston tells me Athena keeps tabs on her, I just can’t…I can’t shake it. I know this company’s tech. I know what they’re capable of and I _know_ they’re not gonna let me off the hook so easy.”

 

Though the training sessions are tiring, Fareeha barely sleeps. She spends her nights staring vacantly at the bunk above her head, bone tired, unable to find peace. Interactions with others from that day crowd her mind – a conversation with Torbjorn, a joke with Lúcio. Did she do enough to impress the Overwatch veterans, or do they think her inferior? What do the new recruits see in her, if anything? Do they consider her their peer? She always comes to the same conclusion, turning her head to the photographs, the dimly-lit ghosts of her mother’s face: She’s a pale imitation. A knockoff. A disappointment to old and new recruits alike. And jeez, what would her old army buddies think of her, navel-gazing like this? She was the cocky one, brave, confident to the point of foolhardiness. And Helix… Helix Security would have a slightly different view. When she does sleep, she’s shocked awake by dreams of explosions, rogue god AIs, and soldiers she could have saved but didn’t.

 

On top of this, every day, Winston asks Fareeha for an answer to his proposal of making her second in command. And every day, Fareeha begs him off, insisting on more time, or finding an excuse to leave him hanging, forced to hide her jangling nerves.

 

On Sunday night, the thoughts beat through Fareeha’s mind harder than before, fuelled by anxiety over tomorrow’s simulation. At 0217 she admits defeat, swinging her legs out of bed and sitting, hunched, rubbing her tired eyes. She cards her fingers roughly through her hair before cursing and getting to her feet.

 

The kitchen in the early hours is eerily silent, not helped by the run-down state of the base. Fareeha flips on only one light, illuminating a peeling orange Overwatch logo on the kitchen wall. She rummages a cabinet for teabags, dumps one in a mug before she slumps back against the worktop, gnawing the skin around her thumbnail as her aching eyes fixate on the glow of the boiling kettle.

 

She catches sight of her reflection in the chrome of the refrigerator. She moves closer, smoothing her fingertips up her cheekbones and into her hair. She inspects her father’s strong nose, defined pout and sharp jaw. Her mother’s almond-shaped eyes stare back at her: narrow, sweeping, judging. Fareeha touches the tail of her Horus tattoo, delicately, as though it might be hot. She follows it from her lower lid to her cheekbone. It had seemed right at the time – to honour her mother’s memory, and maybe attract protection, from whatever divine source she could get. She was wrong about that, of course.

 

She massages the purple shadows under her aching eyes. Maybe leadership would be easier to fall into if people didn’t keep dying...

 

“Oh,” A woman’s voice jolts her from her thoughts, and Fareeha starts, turns, sees Vaswani at the doorway. Even at nearly two-thirty in the morning, she’s still in that beige and lavender uniform, her hair still tightly bound, even her headset and visor in place. A world apart from Fareeha’s own shorts and t-shirt. Fareeha feels her heart pounding against her ribcage – it’s like being approached by a wild deer, that would bolt at the slightest move.

 

“I did not mean to interrupt.” The other woman mutters, turning to leave.

 

Fareeha shakes her head, “Not interrupting anything. You…need something?”

 

“I…no, just a bottle of water,” Vaswani replies. She turns back, still looking to the doorway. Unwilling to even chat. As if Fareeha would even be in the mood to make small talk.

 

“Well,” Fareeha replies, “The fridge is right there.”

 

Satya nods, cuts across to the fridge. She reaches in for a bottle of water, closes the fridge door, then stands, eyes away, holding the bottle to her chest, “You have a simulation in less than seven hours, you know.”

 

“Yeah, I know.” Fareeha folds her arms, indignant.

 

“Maybe you should sleep,”

 

“Maybe I can’t.”

 

“Unfortunate.”

 

“Unfortunate,” Fareeha repeats, nodding her head, remembering their first meeting, Satya supposedly mistaking her for her mother, drawing attention to the fact that she’d stumbled across a fraud. _Unfortunate_.

 

The kettle pings, interrupting the two. Fareeha brushes past Satya, pours her tea. She takes another look over her shoulder, watches Satya continue to stand ineffectually in the dim kitchen, still holding the bottle of water to her breast. Fareeha notices, then, her other hand at her side, holding something. A foil packet, kind of like the wrapping in a box of Pop-Tarts. She sighs, sets her tea on the counter, leans next to it. If this woman feels the need to sneak around with toaster pastries for dinner at 2am, she’s not gonna help by telling her off.

 

“Hey, Vaswani. I get this job isn’t prime Architech work, and people aren’t exactly trustful of you, but…you don’t have to creep around at night just to eat, okay? Just don’t think we’re gonna put up with this attitude of yours for long, either.”

 

“Attitude.” Not a question.

 

“Y-yeah…look, you want to make this easier on yourself? Give a little, you’ll get a little. If you’re here for six weeks, living in close quarters, I won’t have anybody here tiptoeing around you. I _know_ Tracer and Hana have been trying hard with you. Maybe the rest of us could do better, but it doesn’t help when you slink around like a damn rat.”

 

Satya only stares at the tea steaming in Fareeha’s hand, blinking, amber eyes flashing. With the visor, they almost glow in the dark, like lamps. A deer in the headlights. Finally, her dark voice cuts through the hanging silence: “What does your t-shirt mean?”

 

“Um…” Fareeha glances down at the logo on her breast – an eagle’s head, white on blue, bordered with gold. The cartoon bird smirks with its hooked beak, confident, determined. She scratches the back of her neck, “UBC Thunderbirds. Just a college thing. Basketball.”

 

“Basketball.” The other woman nods. She makes to leave, though not before stopping at Fareeha’s side. Fareeha’s shoulders tighten, her breath shortens, she brings the cup of tea up to her lips as a distraction as she feels Vaswani’s uniform brush her bare arm. She stops, shorter than her by a few inches, but not looking up to meet her gaze, “If the Vishkar corporation ever needs advice on firing rockets or… _playing basketball_ , your opinion will be noted.”

 

Satya leaves. Behind her wafts her scent - something soft and floral, like jasmine. Her wedged heels click dully against the linoleum as she disappears down the hall.

 

Fareeha stands stock still. A shiver travels up her spine, a hot prickle working up her neck to her cheeks. Her nerves snap, partly in fury at being spoken to like a child, partly… Well, she doesn’t even want to begin thinking about that right now. Her skin buzzes where the material of Satya’s tunic brushed against it.

 

She pulls herself together before scurrying back to her room. She gets in bed, sits up as she holds the mug of tea to her chest. It’s one of the flavours her mother used to drink, she didn’t check the packet – something warm, faintly spicy. Fareeha doesn’t take it with sugar, the way Ana did. A few sips and some deep breaths help to quell the fire.

 

Above her, Hana whimpers something in Korean through her dreams. Fareeha stares into the darkness, her mind consumed once again by voices – her mother, slow and smoky. Sometimes gently admonishing, always loving. Occasionally, sharp as a razor.

 

_If I see you anywhere near one of those guns again, I’ll…_

 

Another lost voice, male, easy like warm molasses: _Blame me, Cap. Just thought it’d be better to get it outta her system n’ all…show her how to shoot all safe, like._

 

A third voice, also male, this one like rocks over glass: _Christ on a cracker, Jesse, safe? Like the rest of us aren’t placing bets on how long before you shoot your dick off?_

 

Fareeha snorts at the memory of the last one. She remembers laughing, even as a child in trouble, with shock at the language. She closes her eyes as she lets the voices – however warped with time they may be – envelope her, transport her back. When she sleeps, she dozes in short bursts, jolted awake by images of Swiss mountains, cups of sweet tea, and nervous, amber-eyed deer

 

~

 

The simulation is held just off from the training range, in a corner sheltered by sheetrock from Gibraltar’s high winds. Vaswani is there first, perched on a stool made of hard-light, legs neatly crossed at the knee. Waiting.

 

Fareeha arrives ready in her Raptora suit. It’s built bulky in the chest and shoulders, and snug as an exoskeleton along her limbs and torso. A sand-coloured camo print, branded with Helix Security’s logo, stretches across each armoured plate. After handing in her notice, bargaining with the big boss to take the suit hadn’t been difficult. Each Raptora is moulded to its owner’s body, for optimal movement and protection, so it’s not like it could be recycled. Now, waiting for the other agents to arrive, Fareeha feels the benefits of its bespoke shape, hugged by precision engineering that boosts every joint and muscle, like a performance enhancing drug that can be taken off at the end of the day.

 

Just as well. After her bout of insomnia, Fareeha needs all the help she can get.

She stifles a yawn, helmet tucked under her arm, as she strides past the woman from Vishkar. She knows she’s watching, can sense her sneaking glances at her jet-powered wings and armoured shoulders. She looks behind her – in the split second before she averts her gaze, Satya suddenly looks more interested in the plates that protect Fareeha’s long legs and narrow hips.

 

Caught in the act, Satya only lifts her chin as she turns her attention back to the open document projected from her palm. Fareeha slips on her helmet, hoping the gold visor goes some way to distract from the blush creeping up her neck.

 

“Fareeha!” Reinhardt, clanking in his own armour, lumbers up behind her, smacking her back, “Look alive, my girl!”

 

She laughs despite herself, feels the mechanisms of her suit whir as it absorbs the knock to her spine, “Don’t tear the camo.”

 

“Ah, you kids only care about how _cool_ you look, but is it strong? Is it reliable?”

 

“Why don’t we try it out, old man? Your hammer against my rockets.”

 

“Make way!” There’s a roar of engines, and Fareeha and Reinhardt jump out of the way of Hana’s MEKA, flying at full-boost towards the simulation area. A flash of white and gold follows, barking in Swiss-German – Angela, in her Valkyrie system, in full pursuit.

 

Tracer, Lúcio and Torbjorn soon follow, along with Winston, kitted out in his jump packs and Tesla cannon. He gives Satya a nod, “Looks like we’re ready to go.”

 

Fareeha watches as the woman instantly closes the document she had been reading, replacing it with a blank slate, ready for note-taking. She merely nods back to Winston in acknowledgement.

 

Fareeha looks up to Reinhardt, sighs, “Here goes nothing.”

 

“Don’t think about her,” He replies, pulling on his helmet, his genial face replaced by scuffed steel, “What happened to that girl with more confidence than sense? What if your mother saw you fretting like this, eh?”

 

“I think that’d be the least of her worries if she saw me here.” Fareeha mutters.

 

The bots are started up, put into formation. It’s a basic simulation template – a scenario the old teams faced many times before, when fighting rogue bands of humans or Omnics disrupting the peace. Nothing too demanding. The agents take position – Fareeha boosts high into the air, and hovers there. It feels good to be up this high – even in a simulation, she feels at home soaring above her fellow soldiers. A watchful eye above them. A protector.

 

She reaches up to thumb her comm, “Have fun down there, guys. We’re all in this together.”

 

“I gotcha!” Lúcio sings back, “Hope you guys like the new upgrade!”

 

Fareeha looks down to see his suit, usually beaming with yellow light, switch to a luminous, lime green. It takes a second longer to reach her in the air, but she soon realises why the others are now crowing in delight – the burst from Lúcio’s tech pumps her with adrenaline, almost syncing her pulse to its steady beat. A welcome rush of energy washes over her, and she uses her rockets to boost higher. Below, the other agents pause to watch her gain height. Fareeha finds herself craning her neck to look over her shoulder – Vaswani is still perched on her stool. She’s watching too, having paused from scribbling notes to watch Fareeha’s ascent. Hard to tell from this height, but her usual hard look doesn’t seem to be there. In fact, she seems to be genuinely absorbed, legs uncrossed, leaning forward.

 

Fareeha spots a blink of red below from the first wave of practice bots. She shifts the rocket launcher in her grasp, glares down as though the Vishkar woman would be able to see her scorn from this height.

 

Her grasp on the launcher tightens, and she keeps her eyes on Vaswani. Her gloved fingers find the trigger. A soft, preliminary squeeze. She thinks of the woman’s condescending gaze, their 2am meeting in the kitchen. The amused twitch of her lips as she mistook her for Ana Amari. Incessantly patronising. _Unfortunate._

 

Fareeha does not notice her own trajectory as she stares down at Vaswani – does not notice how her jets propel her laterally towards the sheetrock, does not notice the agents below, motioning for her to stop. Barely registers the crackle in her left ear as Torbjorn scrambles onto the line to bark her back into focus. She only feels her own fury, only sees her vision swim as her resentment rises like bile, only focuses on the rocket launcher in her hands, her fingers curling around the trigger-

 

 _BANG_.

 

She sees red, then white, then black. A hellish heat, followed by cold wind. A rush of vertigo – she’s falling. Below her, there are screams. Fareeha opens her eyes as she drops – sees a smoking crater in the sheetrock. Through the shock, she dully registers her pain – a sharpness in her left side, a numb pressure in her nose. Her mouth is filled with the metallic taste of blood.

 

“Mercy!” Tracer is screaming, and there’s a flash of gold wings above her, too late.

 

Fareeha’s last thought before she lands like a sack of concrete: _Some people lead from the ground._

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy, I'm still alive, just busy writing essays! Thanks for hanging in there. Think of this as a kind of mini chapter, to keep updates more regular. Also this is a flashback I've had rattling around my head for ages, so. TAKE IT
> 
> Please note that this chapter makes some references to past childhood physical abuse. Nothing graphic, but it's there.

“Gabriel, the decision has been made…” Mum is pacing back and forth outside the door. Her boots fall heavy on the ground – she’s still on duty, even at this time of night.

It’s the year 2056, and Fareeha Amari is eleven years old.

“Look, look, hear me out;”

She’s in her cot in the living quarters she shares with her mother. It’s dark – she’s supposed to be asleep. One eye peeks above the covers, watching the shadows cut through the light at the bottom of the door as the adults talk. The rec room is just outside; usually, the muffled chatter of Overwatch agents socialising in the evening is a comfort, but not tonight.

“I heard you out when you brought that criminal here in the first place!” Mum’s shadow is still. Fareeha knows her hands are on her hips, the death glare in full force. “Some of us have children here!”

“Hey, you raise kids in a Watchpoint, you know there’s risk-“

“I do not expect risk in the form of a cowboy waving a knife!”

“ANA.” The hard edge of Gabriel Reyes’ voice rattles the walls. Fareeha flinches and pulls the covers over her eyes. She’s never feared Gabe, but the man has a voice like rocks smashing through glass when agitated, “Listen. To. Me. He is a child.”

“Oh, come on, you’re going to pull that-“

“You don’t know what he’s suffered. Shit, I’m not even at liberty to…” There’s a long sigh, “Look, he felt freaked out and cornered. You seen under his hat lately? Kid got seven shades of shit kicked out of him for killin’ three agents instead of four.”

“Gabriel-“

“Six years between him and Fareeha in there. And they dragged him along with a fuckin’ noose.”

“Gabe-“

“What was I gonna do, leave him bleeding out in the desert? Kid didn’t even have a dry pair of pants to his name.”

“This isn’t a stray dog, you can’t just take him in because you feel sorry for-“

“You’re right, he’s not. He’s a FUCKIN’ human being, a child, and I’m not gonna let him rot for crimes he had no choice in committing.”

She hears mum scoff. But there’s quiet between them now. There’s a dull thump against the door, from what Fareeha assumes is her mother leaning against it. “You’re killing me with this, Gabriel.”

“Yeah, like this is any fun for me. But y’know what, Amari?”

“Do tell, Reyes.”

“I know you’re torn up at even having this conversation, ‘cause you gotta tick the box that tells Jack we did. There’s no way the Ana Amari I know would see a teenager wailing on the kitchen floor like a toddler and think, yeah, I’m gonna chuck him back into the desert or wherever.”

“Maybe I would, if I knew he’d take a knife-“

“A butter knife...”

“And what if he gets access to something worse the next time he ‘freaks out’?”

“Kid’s got all the access of Liao’s two-year-old right now. Isn’t gonna be a next time. You have my word.”

Another long pause. Mum’s boots shift away from the door and she gives a long, defeated groan, “You always saw things in people that others couldn’t. But I swear, if that boy touches one hair on Fareeha’s head-“

“You see the way that kid broke down? It’s him who has to look out for-“

“Gabriel,” Mum’s voice is sharp again, “For the boy’s sake, at least - learn to take yes for an answer.”

~

It’s the next day, and Fareeha is sauntering across the Swiss Watchpoint. She munches through a bag of chips she’d managed to smuggle from the mess hall, and triumphantly scuffs her sneakers against the tarmac to make the roughest, most satisfying scrape she can. Swiping food isn’t something she does often – only when she’s bored, like when none of the kids she likes are visiting, or Gabe is too busy to play basketball. She’s just lamenting the fact she doesn’t have a brother or sister to keep her entertained, when, rounding the corner to the exercise yard, she sees him. The cowboy.

At least, the battered brown hat tells her it must be him. He’s slumped against the wall, head down, arms hugging long legs to his chest. The hat’s wide brim hides his face completely, and Fareeha bends over in a failed attempt to see underneath.

“Hi,” No answer, only a slight flinch, “Are you the cowboy everyone’s talking about?” She punctuates her question with a loud crunch of potato chip. Aside from the hat, nothing else about him looks particularly cowboy-ish – oversized black turtleneck, black sweatpants that don’t reach his ankles, plain white sneakers. Standard issue stuff she sees agents work out in sometimes, and from the looks of it they didn’t have his size in stock.

“Did you really attack my mum with a knife?”

No answer.

Fareeha considers her packet of chips, holds them out as an offering to the unresponsive brown hat, “Want one? No, I guess not…” She squats in front of him, thinking. “My name’s Fareeha. I can show you around if you want?”

Silence.

“Can you tell me your name?” If it weren’t for the shake in his bruised and grubby hands, Fareeha would have assumed he was a wax figure. She indignantly crunches another chip, “Y’know, I heard them say you’re not s’posed to be able to get out here.”

Yet more silence. She scrunches the empty chip bag in her hands and edges closer, leaning forward on her toes, reaching out to grab the hat’s brim, lift it off, get his attention-

“Fareeha.” Her mother’s sharp voice rings out behind her, and Fareeha jumps up, spins around, hides her hands behind her back.

Ana Amari folds her arms, her long hair and jacket floating in the breeze as she regards her with hawkish eyes, “Thought I’d find you around here.” She places a warm hand on top of Fareeha’s head when the girl trots up to meet her.

“I freed up some time for karate today, so you need to go get ready.” Though her voice is still warm, her smile fades as she shifts her gaze from Fareeha to the boy still hunched against the wall. Fareeha remembers the argument outside her bedroom door, and grabs her mother’s hand.

“He didn’t hurt me or anything,” Fareeha’s grip tightens as Ana takes a few steps toward him, “He won’t even talk to me. I just asked him-“

“Don’t you worry, _farah_ ,” Her voice is low now, “Go back to our room, sweetheart. I’ll meet you there.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“I’ll be five minutes, Fareeha.”

Fareeha pauses, nods, releases her mother’s hand. She slowly walks back, waiting for her mother to turn her back before darting behind a stack of crates. She peers through the slats – too far back to hear, but able to see everything from the side.

Ana Amari stands above the cowboy, back straight, hands on hips. Fareeha knows the pose well – knows nothing good usually follows it. But, she notices – her hands are loosening from their balled fists, and her shoulders are relaxing. The woman makes to bend over – no, she’s crouching, getting down on one knee, lowering herself to his level. Her loose hair pours down her back like ink, her royal blue coat cloaks out behind her over the tarmac.

Fareeha can see her lips move, but the words are too soft to hear. The cowboy doesn’t respond – her mother only crouches patiently, eyes still on him, letting the silence hang.

A minute passes, and Ana is speaking again – this time, her subject is responding, hands no longer grasping his calves, but clearly shaking harder with nothing to cling to. His whole body is shuddering now, he’s lifting his head to reveal his face – Fareeha gasps at the purple bloat where his eye should be, almost black in places. She can’t see the other, redder injuries on his face in any detail, and she’s glad for it.

Ana looks at him with her sleek eyes, unfazed but not unsympathetic.

She reaches into one of her jacket pockets, brings out a red and white box. What is that? Candy? No… She pulls out something thin, white – a cigarette? She wouldn’t be caught dead smoking…would she?

She hands the cigarette to the cowboy, who tries to hold it – it jiggles out of his shaking fingers onto the ground. Ana places a hand on his, picks up the cigarette with the other. Fareeha watches with astonishment as she places it between the boy’s lips, pulls a lighter from her other pocket, lights it for him. She waits patiently as he takes a few puffs - the smoke betrays just how quickly he’s breathing, expelling smoke at a rate usually only seen from a steam engine, but it’s slowing – and Ana is still softly chatting to him, idly flicking at the lighter, obviously not expecting an answer.

But he’s looking at her now, no longer hiding beneath his hat. The cigarette bobs in his mouth as he mutters something in return, and her mother laughs – a throaty, genuine cackle, not the kind of polite chuckle Fareeha usually hears her give others at the Watchpoint. She’s regarding him with a broad smile now, and in return he shudders, sobs suddenly – it’s loud enough for Fareeha to hear. He has to reach up and wipe tears from the eye Fareeha can’t see. He takes off his hat, revealing a white and bloody bandage around his head, making his chestnut hair stand on end. Ana rocks back on her heels, hand covering her mouth as she regards him.

She stands at her full height and reaches a hand out, palm open. An invitation. It’s one he seems unable to accept – maybe out of fear, or perhaps disbelief. His own hand – still shaking – hovers above hers as he considers, makes an attempt, draws back. Ana Amari doesn’t move: just stands, statuesque, blue coat flapping at her ankles, raven hair floating at her waist, offering her hand to a young man for whom forgiveness was never an option.

Finally, with a sudden conviction, the boy’s hand claps into her mother’s, grasps it for dear life as she hauls him to his feet. He’s taller than her, revealing the illusion of height that Ana Amari’s air of authority gives her in Fareeha’s eyes. He’s unsteady on his feet, and reluctantly accepts a shoulder to lean on as they shuffle off together. The boy mutters something, and Ana laughs again, deep and honest, as they shuffle past.

“Just don’t try to stab me again, kid, and I’ll get you all the cigarettes you want.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates at 3am, yeehaw!
> 
> Thank you to everyone following along with this so far, writing this fic has become my brain's happy place between uni work! I'm really enjoying getting back into the groove of creative writing with these characters, too. <3

She wakes to stinging white light, an unbearable pressure on her left side, and a _clack_ sound that pierces her pounding skull like a chisel.

Fareeha groans, shuts her eyes as the smell of disinfectant prickles at her nose. The medbay. The accident. Right.

“Ah, she wakes,” Angela’s voice floats across the ward. There’s more of that infernal clacking as she approaches, and Fareeha cracks one eye open, hoping to muster a scowl as the doctor flutters around her bedside. Some fussing over vitals and a few sips of water later, Fareeha gets up the strength to ask the important questions.

“D’you always have to wear those damn heels?”

Angela gives a disapproving flick of her blue eyes, setting aside the tumbler of water before tucking a pale curl of hair behind her ear, “If you have a doctor willing to patch you up after hitting yourself with rockets, it’s in your best interests to let her wear whatever shoes she wants.”

“Fair enough,” Fareeha makes to move her left hand up to her eyes, is quickly met with sickening jolt of pain through her shoulder, “Augh…!”

“Careful, careful,” Angela places a light hand on her arm to ease her back, “You took quite a fall.”

“Oh, jeez. What’s the damage, Doc?”

“Oooh, let’s see now,” Angela stands at her full height, sucking in a sharp breath as she burrows her hands in the pockets of her lab coat, “Three broken ribs, a separated shoulder. No lasting head trauma that I could see on my scans, but a nice second-degree burn under the left eye.”

Fareeha frowns, reaches her right hand across to her left cheek – finds a patch of gauze taped there. “Well, there go my chances with the ladies.”

“Blow yourself up again, maybe someone will take pity on you,” Angela flicks at the IV bag of syrupy yellow liquid, “Still, the protection of that Raptor suit is a credit to you. A couple of days on the Caduceus system will have you right as rain.”

“Raptora. And we’ll see,” Fareeha mutters, closing her eyes again as memories come back to her – the flash, the heat, the screams below, “No one else was hurt, right? Considering I’m not currently on a plane back to Cairo.”

“Everyone’s fine. Just worried about you,” Angela replies. Her voice softens into a note of concern that Fareeha doesn’t care for, “You know, I had to put you into an induced sleep for the past day or so. Do you know why?”

“Umm…”

“Because I’m sure it’s the first sleep you’ve had in quite a while,” Angela continues, “And I’m not the only one who’s noticed,”

Fareeha blinks slowly up at the white ceiling tiles, too sore in both body and pride to hear this.

“Winston asked me to… Listen, I’m not a specialist in mental health, but we can always talk. I can refer you- “

“Um, we can talk about that…sometime. I don’t know.” Fareeha raises her good arm, rubs delicately at her brow, “But if you want to fix my head, you could start with drugging this damn headache.”

A small pause from Angela. “Right. It’s after one in the morning, anyway, I suppose.” She pats the railings of Fareeha’s bed and clicks off to get painkillers, muttering to herself the entire way. Something about soldiers, and how they’re all the same.

Thankfully, the drugs do a good job of zapping Fareeha unconscious until the morning. By the time she wakes, Lúcio has taken over for the daytime shift. Waking to see him is altogether a more pleasant experience than waking to Angela – she likes the doctor fine, but Lúcio’s laid-back bedside manner (and fresh dose of painkillers already to hand) makes his concern all the easier to deal with.

Fareeha is hobbling back from the lavatory when she finds a visitor at her empty bed – Winston, perched on a chair, his back to her as he skims over documents on his tablet. She limps behind him, places a hand on his gigantic shoulder, “What’s that, Boss? My P45?”

“Hey!” He puts the device away, stands up to help her back into bed, his gigantic black hands almost comically gentle, “Don’t even joke about that, what do you think I am?”

“Come on, you’re not gonna make an example of me?”

“For making a mistake?”

“There’s making a mistake, and there’s blowing yourself up in front of the sponsors.” Fareeha holds his gaze. His yellow eyes break contact as he shakes his head.

“That’s not how we did things in Overwatch, and I don’t want to start now.” He sits back, only mildly concerned by the creak of the chair under him, “But, you’re a soldier. I know you’ll want to hear the bad news.”

“Hit me.” Fareeha takes a deep breath, trying to pass off her exhale as a breezy sigh.

“Vaswani had to report back to her superiors. I had the loveliest six-hour video chat with Sanjay Korpal. Wonderful guy, really knows how to make you feel two feet tall. Anyway, for Overwatch to continue to use what little resources they’ve given us in this preliminary stage, all activity must be sanctioned by the Vishkar corporation. And I mean…all of it. No agent leaves this rock without Vaswani’s say-so. Even your supply runs to the city will have to be signed off by her.”

Fareeha lies back against her pillow, closing her eyes, “Winston, I’m so sorry.”

“I won’t hear it,” Winston waves his paw, “I knew they were working towards this. If anything, you just gave them a good reason now, as opposed to a bad reason later.”

She opens one eye to look at him again. If he knew they’d do this anyway, why work with them at all? What’s his angle? She opens her mouth to question him, but her instinct as a soldier claps it back shut. If anyone’s in a position to interrogate their leader, it’s not the agent who just endangered the entire crew by shooting into a stone wall.

Silence hangs between them, heavy with a more pressing issue. Fareeha considers bringing it up outright, ripping it like a band-aid: _So, I’m off the table as Second in Command, right?_

She meets his eyes again, finds his gaze heavy with understanding. Somehow, they’re on the same page. Maybe he gets it, as someone who also inherited leadership they didn’t expect, or maybe it just became a given the second that rocket exploded between her and the sheetrock. Either way, it doesn’t need to be said.

Somehow, it’s less of a relief than Fareeha expected.

Winston pushes his glasses up his nose, “Anyway, I knew these rules wouldn’t go down well with the crew, so I managed to finagle some family leave out of Vishkar to soften the blow. Which you might wanna take, by the way.”

Fareeha shakes her head. No, the thought of facing that haunted apartment in Cairo is unbearable, and visiting her father in Vancouver doesn’t seem wise. For one thing, the man can see through her lies like glass, and she doubts telling him would come to anything good. _Hey dad, remember that international task force mum dedicated her life to, to the point of it destroying your relationship? And how that same organisation ended up outlawed by the United Nations? Well a few of her old work buddies and I got together, and-_

“Knock-knock!” Tracer has appeared at the doorway, looking about as dressed-up as Fareeha has ever seen her, in fitted jeans, a printed shirt and blazer. She holds a plate wrapped in tin foil, “Heard you were up, so thought I’d check up on ya. Reinhardt sends love and breakfast, by the way.”

She deposits the plate on the bedside table. Fareeha watches her curiously, noticing the woman looks even more hyped up than usual. The attitude she’s giving off is positively electric. “What’s going on, Oxton?”

“Nothing!”

Lúcio appears back on the ward, and shuffles up behind her, ruffling her hair, “She’s excited to see her girlfriend,”

Winston chuckles into his tablet. Colour blooms in Tracer’s cheeks, but she shrugs, grins, scuffs her sneakers on the floor.

“Yeah, well! A week with the most beautiful woman in the world, wouldn’t you be excited? Oh,“ She grips her hands on the railing of the bed as she hops on one foot, “Not just that, though. Turns out Tekhartha Mondatta _himself_ is coming to London to speak. How lucky is that? God knows, the way things are going back home, we need it.”

Fareeha smiles weakly in return. As much as she loves Tracer’s enthusiasm for Omnic activism, she doesn’t have the strength to handle that discussion this morning. Instead, she pats Tracer’s hand, tells her to give her all the details when she gets back. In all honesty, the fact that Tracer has so much waiting back home fills her with a pang of jealousy the woman doesn’t deserve.

“Yeah, listen, you just focus on getting better,” Tracer tells her, “You too sore for a goodbye hug?”

“Just be gentle,” Fareeha replies, holding out her good arm. Guilt weighs on her chest like a stone as Tracer hugs her warmly and pecks her left cheek. From what she remembers, Tracer would have been the one directly below her when she exploded against that rock. If any stone had splintered off and fallen…

She squeezes her eyes shut. She must be better than this.

 

*****

 

Fareeha leaves the medbay two days later. While Mercy’s treatment speeds up her healing tenfold, Fareeha complains that if she must stay any longer, the plain white walls will be what really sends her to therapy. Angela relents, shooing her back to the main Watchpoint with a bottle of painkillers and strict orders to return if her shoulder or ribs give her any more trouble.

Fareeha returns to her room to find a pink post-it deposited on her pillow, alongside a small bag of Korean plum candy.

_Fareeha! Bunking with Angie for a few days so you can make a full recovery. Rest up and eat all the candy you want! Get well soon! ~Hana_

Fareeha smiles as she inspects the bag of sweets, heartened by the gesture, but crestfallen. The last thing she wanted was to be alone. Hana’s as energetic as any nineteen-year-old, sure, but far from an annoying roommate. She sits the candy on the nightstand among her family photos, groaning as her cracked ribs throb through the entire left side of her torso. A hefty dose of painkillers soon has her curled in bed, half-dozing through the afternoon, thoughts skipping. How’s the security at Helix going without her running things? Certainly, there’s been nothing in the news regarding the Anubis AI, but what about that other pain in Helix’s ass, the Shrike? What about Tracer, is she making the most of her time off with her girlfriend? What are they doing right now? What’s Jesse doing right now, for that matter? Hell, is he even still alive? What if he comes back, what would he think of this coalition with Vishkar? What would he think of Satya Vaswani?

She imagines introducing the two of them. Why, what would it matter what he thinks? She doesn’t have any time for the woman herself, so who cares if Jesse likes her or not? Especially considering Vaswani hardly likes her back. Which is a shame. She’s pretty. Really pretty. Sharp as a tack, too, from the looks of it - supposedly those Architech people are as smart as they come. She remembers the words from a professor back at college when she’d shown an interest in that sort of work. _Fareeha, trust me when I say this isn’t an insult to your intelligence. But hard-light makes our engineering work look like Lego._

Fareeha half-laughs at the memory. No wonder Vaswani’s in a constant state of looking down her nose at everybody. Still, how much information does she have on each agent here? Does she know Fareeha’s background? Her work with the Raptora system? Not that it matters what that woman thinks. She certainly won’t be singing her praises after watching her shoot a rocket into her own face, anyway.

She shudders, pulling her pillow from under her head and hugging it to her chest - an attempt to anchor herself as the painkillers make her head swim. But with the drugs leaving her too drowsy to scold herself, to draw her thoughts back before they go too far, she thinks of Vaswani – Satya – so regal and put-together, not a glossy black hair out of place, or a smudge in the eyeliner that wings her amber eyes. So beautiful.

Fareeha gives an anaemic groan as a new wave of drowsiness pushes her over the edge into sleep.

 

*****

 

Within twenty-four hours, Fareeha’s boredom is too much to handle. She knocks around her room most of the morning, attempts to sleep through her complaining ribs, is unsuccessful. The hours she’d otherwise spend combat training pile up, seemingly endless. Torbjörn took up the offer of family leave, but reaches her comm from Sweden, tells her he’s set up the pieces of her Raptora suit in the workshop, ready for repair. “Maybe help with my turrets too, put that fancy degree to good use.”

Fareeha had only smiled faintly, knowing the drowsiness from the painkillers would leave her too spaced to concentrate on anything like that. And, truth be told, she isn’t looking forward to seeing her suit laid out on a table like a corpse on a slab, stark evidence of her failure. No thanks.

Still, dazed from painkillers or not, boredom drives her to the practice range. If she can’t fight, she’ll certainly watch the others train without her.

The range is a little quieter than usual – with Torb and Tracer on leave, and Reinhardt and Winston working elsewhere on the Watchpoint, it’s only Hana, Angela and Lúcio who have shown up to train. Fareeha eases herself into a chair on the viewing platform – gives the others a sheepish wave in return when they notice her. She tries not to look at the blackened crater scarring the rockface above.

“Hey, you!” Lúcio is skating towards her, grinning widely, a yellow glow radiating from his suit. A sight for sore eyes - or ribs, as things would have it. He leaps up to the platform, gripping the railings, “Good to see you up and running!”

“Up and hobbling.”

“Yeah well, we’ll get that fixed up soon enough,” He makes to say something else, when his gaze flicks to something behind her, his expression darkening instantly.

Fareeha looks over her shoulder as best she can without hurting. Behind her, Vaswani has stepped outside, seemingly engrossed in the lightpad projected from her robotic palm.

She looks back to Lúcio, who sullenly drops from the railings, shooting her a two-fingered salute as he skates back to the others. _Good luck with that._

Fareeha takes a deep breath, cursing the heat prickling her cheeks as she tries to look collected. She waits for a minute, anticipating some remark. A snide comment harking back to the night before the accident, maybe, how she had really proved the value of having enough sleep, how _unfortunate_ it was that she ruined the simulation in such a way…

Nothing. Fareeha turns to look again – the other woman continues to tap away, lips pursed, sleek eyes firmly trained on the screen. What could possibly be so interesting?

“You can sit here, if you want,” Fareeha offers, gesturing to the empty seat next to her. No answer, not even a cursory glance. Fareeha bristles, dips her head to mutter under her breath, “Fine, don’t answer.”

She decides against making another attempt. If Vaswani thinks she’s too good to talk, that’s fine. Still, having the woman stand behind her, even staring into a virtual notepad, is unnerving. Fareeha feels the need to keep her chin tilted up, her posture straight, even with her fractured bones complaining from the strain.

Above the field, Angela is doing her usual tests with the Valkyrie suit, golden wings spread as she zips in all directions, sparks trailing behind like fairy dust. She catches Fareeha’s eye, takes a hand off her staff to wave, and in a fleeting moment of silliness, exaggerates blowing a kiss.

Fareeha chuckles, rolls her eyes, mutters, “Jeez.”

Behind her, Satya sniffs. There’s a chime of hard-light being projected, and Fareeha looks to the side to see her taking a seat on her virtual stool. Visored eyes flick to her, momentarily, “Incredible how quickly one can recover with Caduceus technology.”

“Huh? Oh yeah,” Fareeha swallows, glad that Vaswani seems averse to keeping her gaze on her. Instead, she seems focused on Angela, eyes narrowed.

“I trust you will be back up in the sky as soon as possible.”

“Within a week, I’m told.”

“Truly remarkable.” Satya crosses one leg over the other. Her uniform today is slightly different – navy blue instead of white, with gold details instead of lavender. She primly brushes at her knee with her flesh hand, and Fareeha notices her nails have been painted gold to match. Not a chip or smudge anywhere. She snaps her vision back to the training field before Satya catches her staring.

“Also remarkable how such an explosion couldn’t get through that suit. Ziegler tells me your damage was mostly from the fall.”

Fareeha flushes at the compliment, however indirect. There’s silence as she considers how to answer, then, “Well, I worked hard enough on it, I’m glad it saved me.”

She turns to see Satya tilting her head with piqued interest. Her chest flutters at the woman’s amber eyes fixed on her, for once.

“I mean, I didn’t _invent_ Raptora. But I took it to mark five, then six. Kinda nice when your side-projects get picked up by your employer, I guess.” Fareeha hears the excitement in her own voice, the thrill of bragging at risk of carrying her away. She mentally scolds herself – come on, what would this woman care?

But Satya raises one eyebrow, replies with her dark, low voice, “You are an engineer.”

“Well, I studied it pretty hard, yeah.”

“Between your basketball games.”

Heat blooms from Fareeha’s neck to her cheeks. Satya’s tone certainly doesn’t feel mocking, at least not cruelly. Hard to tell with the Ice Queen, though. She hesitates in finding a smart answer, but leaves it too late. Now silence hangs between them again.

A short beep cuts through it. Fareeha turns just in time to see Satya shoot up to her feet, the hard-light stool shattering into nothingness. “If you’ll excuse me.” A dip of her head, and she’s hurrying back inside, leaving Fareeha alone to watch the agents train down below.

 

*****

 

The next day, and Satya is already outside when Fareeha comes down to the training field. They talk again, after some false starts – Satya gets halfway through asking after her injuries, only to clam up when Angela floats over to talk to Fareeha instead. The doctor proceeds to give her the briefest of check-ups right there on the viewing platform – Fareeha feels a bite of irritation at the doctor's apparent entitlement to her patients' bodies, but decides to laugh it off - when Angela stands behind to poke and prod at her shoulder, Fareeha rolls her eyes in exasperation at Satya. Surprisingly, she’s met with the furthest thing from the sour look she’s come to expect – instead, the woman brings her prosthetic hand to her mouth, allowing only the briefest glimpse of the smile that curves the lips behind, eyes twinkling with amusement in the strong morning sun.

A nervous thrill courses its way up Fareeha’s spine, resulting in a shudder that prompts Angela to mutter, “Don’t stay out here if you’re chilly, Fareeha.”

“Right, right,” Fareeha gulps and steps back to the door. She glances at Satya, who still hides her expression behind her hand, but watches her go, “I’ll go inside and, uh…warm up.”

The day after, they meet at the practice range again. Satya asks after Fareeha’s recovery, and in return, Fareeha asks if Satya needs any supplies, assuming she'll be allowed to drive down to the city for groceries as soon as she’s better. Satya merely shakes her head, and changes the subject to the weather. Their conversation is never easy, or amiable – there’s more silence than talk, and the talk never feels unforced. When Satya is paged away once again – it seems to be an hourly thing – Fareeha finds herself wondering how much concern the other woman really has over her injuries. It certainly seems genuine - awkward as hell, but genuine. She immediately quashes that line of thought. It's a pleasantry at best – Fareeha’s a potential commodity, nothing more, and it’s in Vaswani’s best interests to keep tabs on her health.

 

*****

 

“I don’t get it, Lú,” Fareeha mutters over a particularly charred chunk of Raptora suit, “One day she’s staring a hole through me like she wishes I’d catch on fire. The next she just…wants nothing more than a conversation.”

It’s three days later, and Fareeha and Lúcio are in the workshop. With her injuries healing at a rate of knots under Angela’s care, Fareeha had to accept it was time to face her damaged suit. The hollow carapace of her Raptora sits in pieces on her workbench, the brown khaki making it resemble the shell of a roach.

Lúcio, hunched over his dissected Sonic Amplifier opposite, grunts in reply, “Don’t know why you’d even want Vishkar people talking to you. But…”

Fareeha waits for him to continue. When she doesn’t get the rest of his answer, she glances up from her armour, “But?”

“Nothin’,”

“C’mon.”

Lúcio sits back and reaches for his nearby bottle of Gatorade, “Alright, but this is speculation on my part, okay? I’m wondering…if she had to wait for permission.”

“For what? To Talk to me?”

Lúcio takes a thoughtful sip, “To anyone. Look, I’ve heard rumours about Vishkar that’d make your skin crawl. Shit like, kids moulded into grown adults that have their entire lives dictated. People who can’t socialise outside of designated ‘friends’ or even eat without being told when.”

Fareeha sits back on her stool, quiet. She thumbs at a torn flap of khaki fabric on her suit, revealing the sapphire blue of the armour underneath. She remembers Vaswani, adrift in the kitchen in the early hours, that little foil packet grasped at her side.

Lúcio hops up from his own stool to grab another tool, “Forget I said anything, yeah? This is just stuff I heard from other guys who spied on ‘em, I didn’t see it mys-“

Their comms beep rapidly. They both reach up to their ears to thumb an answer.

 _Agents_. Athena comes through, speaking quickly. Is it even possible for an AI to sound on-edge? _Please meet with Winston in the television room in the living quarters, immediately._

Fareeha and Lúcio are last to arrive. The others are gathered around the screen, silent – even Reinhardt is quiet. Always a bad sign.

“What’s going on?” Fareeha places a hand on Reinhardt’s massive bicep to nudge past, so she and Lúcio can see. No one answers, but the red banners of the rolling news on the screen gives her the briefest summation in so many words.

_Mondatta. Assassinated._

“Wait, wait for them to show it again.” Winston tells her, paw pointed at the TV.

Fareeha looks to Lúcio, who stares dumbstruck at the screen. She looks to the others – Angela, rubbing at her chin. Hana, tiny and silent on the couch, knees drawn to her chest, also searching the other’s expressions for guidance. Reinhardt stands behind her, his arms folded, head bowed, grave. Torb- No, Torbjörn took the offer of leave, with Tracer. Wait, didn’t Tracer say she was-

“There! There it is,” Winston has hopped to his feet, and he jabs his finger against the screen. Athena pauses the news feed. The camera had panned to top of the buildings, momentarily distracted from Mondatta’s speech by some commotion. Athena zooms, enhances, and right where Winston continues to point – a linear blue flash, unmistakeable in the dark.

Winston has stopped pointing now, and he claps a hand to his headset, “Agent Tracer, report. Tracer, report your position _immediately_. Tracer- “

Athena has unpaused the broadcast now, and set it back to the live feed. And it looks like Winston wasn’t the first to notice Tracer in that footage.

 _Authorities have confirmed they are investigating possible Overwatch activity at the site._ The blonde news anchor can barely hide her excitement. _We have multiple reports that former Overwatch agent Lena ‘Tracer’ Oxton was at the scene, apparently armed. Again, authorities are investigating, and we will give you information as soon as we know for sure whether this assassination was related to Overwatch activity…_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the most wonderful time of the year (Femslash February) I didn't proofread this

London in June is damp and gloomy with a mist that clings to the cobbled streets. It’s hardly warm by Fareeha’s standards, not even as warm as Gibraltar, but it certainly seems hot enough for the English residents, many of whom seem to think nothing of stripping off to venture into the streets.

“I _told_ you, I took my guns because I was scared there’d be a security risk. And look what happened!”

Fareeha leans against the window as she tunes out the argument behind her. She raises a hand to rub at her forehead as she watches another group of pale, shirtless men pass below. Her first mission with Overwatch, and she’s sent to rescue an agent framed for assassination, who may or may not have blinked out of existence by the time they arrived. She hadn’t even been allowed to wear her Raptora suit – this is a low-key mission, designed to get Tracer safely into a backup chronal accelerator and, with as little attention as possible, back to Gibraltar.

“Irrelevant. That was not your business, nor your concern.”

The damage to Tracer’s equipment had left her ties to the current timeline volatile, constantly ripping her from the present, unable to communicate back to them. It had taken three endless, sleepless days for Athena to connect to her comm long enough to secure a location. A skeleton team of Fareeha and Angela, chaperoned by Vaswani in a cloaked Vishkar aircraft, had already left for London, ready to grab the woman as soon as she blinked back into their own timeline. They finally intercepted Tracer in St James’s Park, on her hands and knees, nails dug into the grass as if afraid she’d fall off the very earth, her accelerator scuffed and crackling around her chest.

She glances at her, now cleaned up but still shaken, held by Angela on a hotel couch. Tracer glares across a coffee table at Vaswani with a fury she didn’t know the woman was capable of. Between them, Winston’s black face fills the screen of one of their comms, brow furrowed with concern. It’s a worry Fareeha shares - what must it be like for Lena, to have such a fragile tether to the world? To experience nonexistence and come back, always one accident away from being lost forever? She supposes she wouldn’t cope too well with it either.

“No, you don’t get to tell me what’s my concern,” Tracer’s voice is jittery, snapping with nerves like an elastic band, “You can’t tell me what I can do off-duty, and you can’t tell me how I’m supposed to feel when I’m being accused of murder!”

Satya taps a gold nail on the coffee table, “I can when you pull this kind of stunt! You realise you have likely ruined this entire endeavour with your foolishness?”

Winston clears his throat, “Team, please-“

“So it’s foolish to want to protect-“

“Protect who? Is your precious Mondatta still alive? No, and not only have you pinned blame on yourself, you have likely pinned it on this very organisation.”

The other agents exchange glances, unnerved by Tracer’s uncharacteristic fury and Vaswani’s raised voice.

A bitter laugh cracks in Tracer’s throat. She gets to her feet, addressing Winston’s screen, “You fill her in, love. I don’t trust myself to stay around this woman for another second.”

She leaves for her own room, pulling the door into a slam that makes Vaswani jolt in her seat.

Winston rubs at his brow, clearing his throat, “I’m sorry, M-miss Vaswani, she had a scare with her accelerator, she…”

“That’s quite all right.” Vaswani answers, in a tone that implies it definitely is not. She looks down at her hands, “Please, continue.”

Winston nods, swipes to replace his facecam with a file photograph. The three women are faced with an image of a slim, scowling woman in a purple catsuit and severe ponytail. It’s a still from a security video – she stares directly into the camera, a massive gun ready to fire. Her glowing yellow eyes catch Fareeha’s attention first, but it’s the colour of her skin that catches her second.

“Aww, she looks blue,” She mutters. All eyes are on her then, all asking same question: _Is this really the time?_

“Sorry. Go on.” Fareeha’s cheeks burn, and she catches Satya’s eyes for just a second – the woman purses her lips and stares down at her own hands again. Is she trying not to smile?

“Widowmaker. Formerly known as Amélie Lacroix.” Winston continues. Fareeha frowns upon hearing the name – Lacroix? _That_ Lacroix? “You two won’t need this explained, but for Vaswani’s sake…”

Fareeha keeps her eyes fixed on the image as Winston details what they know of Lacroix’s story – sure enough, it’s the same beestung lips, sleepy eyes, neat, upturned nose. She hadn’t known Amélie well, not really – another face who only appeared around the Watchpoints after she’d left for college.

Angela turns from the screen, suddenly busy with untying her hair, “So why would Talon make her assassinate Mondatta?”

“Uh, correct me if I’m wrong,” Fareeha interjects, “But I thought Talon dispersed after you guys stuffed Akande Ogundimu in one of our- one of Helix’s prisons?”

Winston scratches the fur under his chin, “That’s…not quite the case.”

He tells them about the attack on his lab. The strike team of Talon agents, the masked figure who nearly robbed Athena of all her information on former agents. The ensuing recall.

“Wow. Anything else you’re keeping from us?” Fareeha asks.

Winston sighs heavily, “I was going to tell you, when it was the right time. When we’d had a successful mission together and I knew we had a solid team. Of course, if I’d known they’d shoot _Mondatta_ of all people…”

Angela stands up from the couch, “I’m sorry, Winston, but if there’s nothing more to be decided today, I really must stay with Lena.”

He nods, waves her away. The others watch her march from the room, shaking her head.

“Yeah. Meeting adjourned,” Winston mutters, “Are you guys safe enough to get some rest overnight?”

“Data on the transport tells me it’s still under cover. I can’t see anyone climbing the library roof tonight, either.” Vaswani replies.

“Good. Get some sleep, agents.”  

**

The Alderworth Hotel had looked infinitely better on the outside, and was likely coasting on location alone. Fareeha’s single room is tinier than expected – only enough space for a single bed and nightstand. The carpet is scuffed and dotted with cigarette burns, with a musty smell for extra character. No en suite bathrooms on this floor either, but she’s an ex-soldier, she’s not phased. It’ll do for this mission – busy, cheap, anonymous. 

Sleep remains as elusive as ever, and after a few hours of staring at the patch of black mould on her ceiling, Fareeha gives up and drags herself to the shower down the hall.

She tries the door – damn. Occupied. A couple of minutes loitering outside, and the bathroom door opens. A woman steps out from the steam that billows into the hallway – wrapped in a white hotel gown, with jet black hair slicked back behind her ears. It takes Fareeha a long few seconds before she realises she’s face to face with Satya Vaswani.

Satya stares up at the taller woman with eyes that, for once, aren’t hidden behind a visor. These eyes don’t glow yellow behind the lens of hard light – they’re wide, clear, and dark enough to almost look black in the dim lighting of the corridor. She raises her towel up to her face as if caught undressed – why she would need to hide, Fareeha thinks, with what must be the world’s most powerful waterproof makeup still intact, is beyond her. And that’s saying nothing of the way her skin glows from the steam of the shower, showing off an exquisite bone structure.

Fareeha clears her throat, slides back against the wall to maintain some illusion of cool, “Evening, Vaswani.”

“Hello,” Vaswani’s eyes dart in the direction of her own room, her hand touching at her wet hair, “Did you need something?”

“Uh, was just waiting for the shower. Didn’t expect to have to wait at 1am.”

“And I did not expect an audience, but here we are.”

High cheekbones or not, the woman always tests what little patience Fareeha has left.

_It’s fine. Take the high road. For the others, if not for your own sanity._

“Listen,” She shoves her hands in her jean pockets, dragging her gaze away from the glimpse of clavicle peeking out from Vaswani’s dressing gown. A pleasing brown V under white towelling. She tosses her hair back, letting the golden rings jingle against her own throat, “I just wanted to apologise on Tracer’s behalf.”

“Why? You are not responsible for your colleague’s behaviour.”

“See, I kind of feel like I am,” Fareeha reaches up to scratch behind her head, “We’re all for one and one for all in this organisation, you know?”

Vaswani shakes her head as she steps back to her room, “I’m afraid I don’t.”

Fareeha walks with her, “I just mean, in the old Overwatch it’d be second nature to try and save someone like that. Whether the guy’s a figurehead of peace, a fellow agent, or a regular citizen. No one gets left behind.”

“And none of you see a problem with that?” Vaswani’s eyebrows knit together, “You would potentially botch an entire mission for one person who can’t be saved?”

“Well, I personally haven’t been on an Overwatch mission before now. But my philosophy is that the person comes first - I learned _that_ one the hard way,” Fareeha answers with a short laugh. Vaswani doesn’t answer, busy fumbling with her keycard. Fareeha offers to take it, unlocks the door, holds it open. Satya mutters barely-audible thanks. “I just wanted to explain things from Tracer’s perspective.”

“I understand her point of view just fine, thank you,” Those perfect gold fingernails comb back a stray tendril of wet hair from her forehead, “And it would be a mistake of her to assume that Vishkar aren’t also working towards a better world.”

The two of them face each other in the doorway, silent. Fareeha raises her arm, leans against the frame. She hopes it looks more casual than it feels. She speaks first.

“Um, while I’ve caught you,” She stuffs her free hand in the pocket of her jeans, jingles some change, “We’re running low on fresh food and other stuff back at base, so… I mean, we’ve got enough cans of corn to last us a year, but these guys got used to me driving down to the city-“

“Well, I may not be able to sign off on that, if any signs of Overwatch activity are noticed around Gibraltar…”

“But that’s why they send me, see, since I’m not an ex-agent or a celebrity. And if you think Tracer’s bad right now, you should see her when we run out of teabags-“

Satya raises her right hand, places one finger over Fareeha’s lips. Her lips part in shock, then clamp shut. She hopes Satya can’t feel the rush of heat currently rushing to her mouth.

“Always, with your jokes and nervous laughing,” Satya isn’t looking at her, staring over her shoulder instead. Fareeha dumbly gazes back. She’s close enough to pick out details of Satya’s face she’d otherwise never pick up - she notices a tiny mole just above her lip, fixates on it. “I looked up your work. You are far more intelligent than those puns would have people believe.” She glances at her own finger on Fareeha’s lips, yanks her hand away as if the skin is white hot. She steps backwards, further into her room.

“I will see what I can do about a supply run.” Satya holds the door, warning Fareeha to step back, “It’s very likely that I will have to chaperone, you understand.”

“Then I’ll be sure to behave.” Fareeha answers. She cringes inwardly at the crack she hears in her own voice.

Satya’s lips twitch into the hint of a smile, before the door swings shut, leaving Fareeha alone in the musty hallway, the other woman’s touch still buzzing on her lips.

**

At 5am, the team climb to where they had left the Vishkar helicraft a couple of days prior, hidden under a cloaking device on top of a nearby library. The four women squeeze inside and let the roof of hard light seal them in. Angela mutters something about not being a fan, how the blue light is already giving her a headache. No one answers her, too weary for small talk. Fareeha and Satya sit up front, Tracer and Angela behind. No one pilots it – coordinates are simply punched in, and the passengers sit back as the aircraft does all the work.

It’s the longest four hours Fareeha has ever experienced. There’s no conversation to be had between the four of them. Tracer switches between gazing sadly out of the window and glaring into the back of Satya’s head. Fareeha looks back to catch Tracer's eye and share a reassuring smile. In return, she fixes her with a toxic stare that makes Fareeha immediately look away.

It’s fine, it’s nothing personal - the woman likely just experienced the worst three days of her life since the original Slipstream accident. So why can she still feel Tracer’s eyes still on her, making heat prickle up to her ears? What the hell did _she_ do?

When the helicraft lands at Watchpoint: Gibraltar, and the roof hisses open to air out four hours of tension and recycled air, all four women audibly sigh with relief. Fareeha jumps out first, offers a hand to assist Tracer. She eyes Fareeha’s hand as though offered a turd on a plate, and turns to Angela, “Help me, Doc?”

“Fine,” Fareeha sighs. She spots Winston knuckle-walking his way out of the lab anyway, accompanied by a very worried Lúcio, “You’re welcome for the rescue, by the way.”

She rolls her shoulders back, tilting her chin up as she approaches Winston. She greets him with a salute, “Search and rescue complete, Commander. ”

“Ummm,” Winston tilts his head, regards her with a blank stare, “It sure is.”

She deflates, shifts her weight to disguise embarrassment behind a more casual stance. She refuses to meet Winston or Lúcio’s eyes as her cheeks flush, “Yeah, so I was…I mean, from what I remember the Commander would have a debrief, and…”

“Oh! Right!” It’s as if Winston forgot he’s the one in charge. Maybe he had.

“We can do it-”

“Later! Yeah, let’s do it later.”

Later doesn’t come, with Winston busy fixing Tracer’s primary chronal accelerator, then spending the rest of the day with her in private. Fareeha knows she’s his priority, both as her leader and best friend. But a cheated feeling tugs at her – the fantasy she’d cultivated for thirty years was specific; reporting back after a job well done, saluting a superior in the form of her mother or Jack (maybe even Gabriel, depending on where they thought she’d work best).

In reality, she’d been snubbed by a talking gorilla with mild social anxiety.

Fareeha swallows back her discontent, focusing instead on typing up a post-mission report that no one will read, but goes some way towards satisfying her own need for formality.

She skips dinner – too tired to eat, too weary to put herself at the receiving end of Tracer’s stare again, whatever she did to deserve that. Hana joins her in their room early in the evening, climbing into the top bunk with an exaggerated yawn and an offer to climb up and watch a movie. Fareeha does, despite her exhaustion – the obvious admiration the younger woman shows her could be a good antidote for an extremely rough day. Fareeha’s sleep deprivation catches up with her though, as she barely manages to keep her eyes open during the opening credits. Next thing she knows, she’s being nudged awake by Hana.

“You’re worse at staying awake than my own mother was.”

Fareeha groans, rubs at both eyes. She leans back against the wall, stares grumpily into the moving shapes on the screen, too tired to even register what she’s watching. Fucking Talon, fucking Vishkar, fucking Ana Amari and her refusal to leave her head…

Only then does she register the past-tense Hana spoke with, and she mentally kicks herself. At least she had her mum when she was as young as 19.

Fareeha hugs Hana with one arm, ruffles her hair with the other. The girl giggles against her chest, kicking her away, “Go to _bed_.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

She grabs her bag of toiletries before taking a trip to the lavatory down the hall. The women’s bathroom is like her old army quarters: toilet and shower cubicles, with one long sink. One of the showers is occupied, filling the room with steam the scent of cloying, fruity soap.

Fareeha notices a pair of orange leggings crumpled on the floor – god damn it.

She visits a toilet stall as quickly as possible, hoping to quickly get in and out with an empty bladder and brushed teeth. But Tracer is already at the sink before she finishes, dripping and wrapped in a purple towel.

Fareeha clears her throat as she approaches, eyes down, keeping a safe distance. She washes her hands, glances at Tracer. The woman is preoccupied with combing her wet hair, staring stony-faced into the mirror. It allows Fareeha to check out the bruise on her left collarbone where she fell.

“Evening,” Fareeha shakes off her hands, waits for a reply. Nothing. She busies herself with squeezing toothpaste onto her brush, “Did I miss much at dinner? Any cooking experiments from Rein I should worry about?”

Tracer only scowls into the mirror, still toying with her hair.

Fareeha sighs, leans on the sink as she brushes her teeth. What has she done, except spend three days rescuing her from literally vanishing into nonexistence? She spits into the sink, sullenly meets her own gaze, winces at her purple eyebags.

A whimper from Tracer distracts her – seems her shoulder is giving her trouble as she tries to apply some moisturiser.

“Hey, let me help with that,” Fareeha makes to take the tube from her, but Tracer pulls away, uttering an even more pained noise with the effort.

“No! God, just…”

“Okay,” Fareeha’s fists rest on her hips, daring Tracer to face her, “What’d I do? What’s so _heinous_ that you’ll treat me like shit after I spent three days worried out of my mind on a rescue mission for you?”

Tracer holds the lotion bottle to her chest, but challenges Fareeha with a furious glare, “I saw!”

“You saw _what_?”

“You, and that…that Vishkar woman.”

“And? In case you hadn’t noticed, we can’t step foot outside this place without her-

“I saw you two nearly kissing in the hall last night!”

“D’you hit your head when you fell, Trace? Cause you’re…” She shakes her head, packing up her toiletries, “I don’t have to listen to this shit.”  

But Tracer continues, now counting off accusations on her fingers, “Meeting up with her when she’s nearly naked from the shower, making sure you thought no one was awake to see it, visiting her room- “

Fareeha turns to leave. Tracer steps in front of her. She isn’t done yet.

“So, what, you thought you could have an affair with her right under everyone’s noses? Get special treatment?“

“No! God!” Fareeha rakes her fingers through her hair, “I don’t even _like_ her. You want to know what I was doing? I ran into her in the damn hallway and asked permission for a supply run. To get stuff the team needs. Including _you_.”

She jabs a finger into Tracer’s good shoulder, a touch too hard. She stares at the white circle left on her skin, watches it quickly fade away. She meets Tracer’s eyes – large, hazel, searching for any sign of dishonesty.

Fareeha sighs and rakes a hand through her own hair, “Listen, I’m exhausted, and you’ve just gone through shit I can’t even fathom, so let’s drop it, okay? Get some rest, heal up, understand that _someone_ around here has gotta butter up the Vishkar rep so we can actually get some shit done around here.”

“Fine,” Though gruff, Tracer’s aggression seems to have melted away. They step around one another to go their separate ways.

Fareeha leaves, the door closing behind her too early for her to catch the sound of Tracer muttering after her, “You still bloody fancy her, though.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lived bitch

_Carrying a flask of coffee, smoothing her helmet hair fresh from the nightshift patrol, Fareeha Amari hurried through the corridors of Helix Security International. As rigorously air-conditioned as the Cairo headquarters were, sweat still dripped down the bridge of her nose, and her face was flushed red with exertion. She sacrificed a precious couple of seconds to dab it away, using her warped reflection in the glass of an office door to grimace at her harried appearance. Captain Khalil’s dying words may have put her in charge of the squad, but it turned out Helix as a company didn’t take “My boss said I could have his job, honest” as grounds for promotion. As a result, she had been assigned all the Captain’s work, none of the pay, and the same subordination as her Lieutenant role. It was…stressful, to say the least._

_She stopped at the door of the meeting room, and though already late, took a couple of seconds to gulp down some of her coffee. She wiped her mouth, squared her shoulders, attempted a cool and collected stance as she pushed aside the door. The room’s occupants, already seated, met her with frowns of impatience and worry. The latter was not all down to her lateness._

_“Apologies for the delay, the team ran into some trouble with… Well, I won’t bore you with that. Don’t look so worried! At least the Anubis security team is doing our job right.”_

_She attempted a good-natured smile, was met with stony glares._

_The conference table was headed by a heavy-set man in his sixties, white hair cropped close to his head and salt and pepper moustache twitching with impatience. General Mahmoud, a man as broad and imposing as befitted his rank. He held up one palm to silence her, “Lieutenant Amari. Do you have the information requested?”_

_“Acting Captain, sir. And yes, just let me…” She set her tablet in the centre of the table, fumbled with the remote. A young man next to the General made a point of shifting himself impatiently in his chair. She resisted the urge to shoot a glare at him - the younger Captain Hassan, a 21-year-old who acquired his rank through blatant nepotism and was frustratingly aware of it. He sighed loudly as the room watched her battle with her tablet’s controls. Belittling as always._

_A female voice piped up to Fareeha’s left, “Tired, Hassan?”_

_Fareeha smiled at the person coming to her defence – a small, dark-skinned woman with a pixie cut, someone she didn’t recognise. The woman smiled back, one shaved eyebrow arching up her high forehead. As grateful as Fareeha was for a small show of support, there was an uneasy undertone to the woman’s smile – more knowing than sympathetic, the cat who got the cream. Fareeha decided to ignore it – she was tired, stressed, had simply never seen her before. Not to mention, the woman was far from unattractive. It only stood to reason that she’d take notice of her._

_Hassan’s reply was quick, though: “Hey, it’s_ Amari _who was sleeping on the job.”_

_Chuckles rose around the table, and Fareeha’s cheeks burned. She replied through clenched teeth, “That was a sleep drug administered by the intruder. The company doctor confirmed it.”_

_Hassan only put his hands behind his head and leaned back as he flashed her a smug smile, pleased with getting a reaction._

_A protracted few seconds later, and her tablet finally projected a 3-D model of a building complex, an intensely detailed blueprint made of spindly orange lines. The model rotated in the centre of the room, a red glow indicating the last known location of the stolen asset in question. She began her spiel._

_“June 5th, 2075: a heavy pulse rifle prototype is stolen from former Watchpoint: Grand Mesa- “_

_“We know this,” the General interrupted, “We did not call this meeting to hear what we already know.”_

_Fareeha nodded obediently, hoping no one else noticed the bead of sweat that rolled down her temple to her cheekbone. She swiped her fingers to the right to bring up a collection of case files, “Then I’ll get to the point. My shortlisted suspects.” She zoomed in on the first one. A Japanese man, sharply-dressed in a crisp white shirt and blue waistcoat, glared out from his case photo, severe features only emphasising his scowl._

_“Oh, hubba hubba,” Murmured another woman at the table. Fareeha fought the urge to roll her eyes and continued,_

_“Hanzo Shimada. Former head of the Shimada yakuza empire. Last seen November 8 th, 2074, with a current bounty of-“_

_“You’re trying to tell us the_ yakuza _are behind this?”_

 _Fareeha closed her eyes for a second, an attempt to ground herself after being interrupted yet again, “I’m trying to say that this particular_ former yakuza _head is one of a few who may have, yes.” She switched from the dated photo of Shimada in a suit to a more recent security camera image – hair now greying at the temples and outgrown enough to be tied back with a gold ribbon. The suit switched for more traditional wear. “Shimada has previously shown highly trained levels of discretion when entering secure facilities. He’s also the brother of one Genji Shimada, former member of Overwatch’s black ops division.”_

_She switched to Genji’s case file, his red eyes glaring out between his steel visor and scarred skin, “I’ve also shortlisted the younger Shimada as a possible culprit.”_

_“Uh huh,” Hassan folded his arms, incredulous, “And what might bring you to that conclusion, Amari?”_

_“I have not concluded that either Shimada is responsible. But it brings me to my main point,” Before she could be interrupted again, she switched back to the 3D blueprint of the Watchpoint. With a tap of her fingernail, a dotted line trailed the route taken by the thief – a quick back and forth, a clean zig-zag from the initial entry point, “The culprit knows the base like the back of their hand. Even someone with access to the Watchpoint’s blueprints would have trouble navigating such a huge building so quickly. This person has been here before, many times.”_

_She waited for an interruption, a rebuttal. There was none._

_“So maybe it’s not the elder Shimada, or Genji, though I know the latter certainly has the stealth. But you know where else we’ve seen calculated entries like these?” She swiped back to the list, brought up another case file. The only image available was a headshot of a hooded figure, face covered by a smooth mask, featureless except for three glowing bars that formed an upside-down triangle._

_“You’re all familiar with our old friend, The Shrike,” Fareeha muttered, staring into the image, “Has infiltrated the Temple of Anubis multiple times. Crossed my path once before, as Captain Hassan so kindly pointed out. Every time, the same clean, calculated,_ military _precision. Uses sleep dart technology far surpassing what Helix’s other assailants have training or access to.”_

_She straightened her back, psyched herself up for the inevitable dismissal that would come with the words that everyone in the room dreaded hearing the daughter of Ana Amari say: “I believe that both the Shrike and the thief at Grand Mesa are, or are close to, former members of Overwatch. High ranking ones, at that.”_

_****_

_Her theory fell on deaf ears, as expected. The men scoffed, the women murmured among each other. General Mahmoud merely dismissed her, disapproval shining in his small, black eyes. She knew, leaving the room after the meeting was adjourned, her superiors would squabble in private over who allowed her to waste their time._

_“Hey,” A dark voice murmured behind her. It was the same woman she’d met in the meeting – small, around her age, a permanent hint of a smirk on her lips. Again, the mistrust rose in her guts, but the woman was a Helix Captain, and a superior was a superior._

_“Sorry, I meant to thank you for trying to stick up for me in there. Captain…?”_

_“Flores,” The woman replied, holding out one gloved hand. Fareeha shook it, “They sent me over from Grand Mesa to help with securing the assets here, figured lightning doesn’t strike twice.”_

_“Yeah, tell that to the Shrike. Pretty fond of striking here.”_

_“Well, for what it’s worth, I agree with you.” Flores’ sharp eyebrow jumped up again, “Don’t see why it’s such an out-there theory to ‘em. You never really know who you’re dealing with, right?”_

_Fareeha only held her gaze – those eyes were far too knowing, sparkling with mirth when no one had made a joke, forcing that uneasy feeling to pluck at her once more. But why? She pulled herself together with a tight, polite smile, “You’re right. Excuse me, Captain, but I’m afraid I have work to do.”_

_“Don’t let me keep you,” She replied, turning to leave, but glancing over her shoulder for one last remark with that low, warm voice, “But I’ll be keeping my eye on you, Amari.”_

_“Uh, thank you, Captain.” Fareeha left in the opposite direction._

_Only when she turned the corner did she realise what had disconcerted her about the woman._

_When her eyes had caught the light, for just a moment, they had flashed purple._

_****_

When the small ragtag team calling themselves Overwatch had been told their second mission was in Greece, they imagined they’d be stalking ancient ruins on an isolated island, perhaps catching out black market dealers, and being done in time for moussaka and ouzo.

Instead, Winston had gained intelligence on an arms deal taking place in one of the densest areas of Athens. Supposedly, these guys were planning on meeting in an empty apartment, in preparation for a later attack.

As a result, Fareeha finds herself perched on a rickety steel balcony for three hours, sweating under her Raptora suit, waiting for their combatants to even show up.

She’s had worse jobs. The balconies of the dense, narrow streets overflow with flowers and herbs, reminding her of her own neighbourhood back in Cairo, with night-blooming jasmine releasing an earthy fragrance that occasionally push through the scent of restaurants and sun-baked concrete from below. On top of that, it’s hard to be bored with the weekend crowd of the Greek capital buzzing down below, unaware of her stakeout. It’s surprising how stealthy a rocket-powered suit of armour can really be.

But most importantly, it’s a mission. An honest-to-god Overwatch intercept.

Fareeha rolls back her right shoulder, then the left. She shifts the weight of her rocket launcher in her grasp. Stealthy or not, the armour is heavy. Her joints ache, her feet sting, her bladder begins to complain. Three hours, and nothing but the half-hourly check-ins from the team.

Speaking of which-

“Winston here. Report your status, agents.”

Hana’s voice chips in first, “No action here. Over.” Hana had got the easy job – sit, disguised, in an open-air section of the café to keep a lookout. Be small, be quiet, be vigilant. Call the MEKA if things go south. From up here, Fareeha can see her sitting outside the café, the pigtails of her silver-blonde wig bobbing as she pretends to talk into a cell phone.

“You sure you got the right place?” Lúcio is reporting in now, uncharacteristically gruff. All Fareeha can see of him is a distinct green glow from a rooftop across the street. He drops his voice to a whisper, “You really had to team me up with…her, huh? For three god d-“

“Still waiting, still ready, over.” Fareeha cuts in. She’s trained with these people for months now, has no qualms about how they’d fare against real opponents in the field. But the second Winston had ordered Lúcio to buddy up with Vaswani for the entirety of the operation, the issue of whether he could set aside his history with Vishkar for long enough worried her.

But he had accepted, aware of what was clearly going unsaid – Vishkar would only greenlight a mission with Lúcio Correia dos Santos under strict supervision from their representative. _Very_ strict supervision. If Lúcio wants to help, he must agree to a babysitter.

“Did you forget I have access to this channel?” Vaswani’s voice flows into Fareeha’s left ear, slow like honey. She ignores the shiver that cuts down her spine.

“Nah,” Lúcio mutters. He can’t be more than a couple of feet away from Vaswani, but talks through the comm channel anyway, “Just don’t see the point in pretending. Do you?”

“Awk- _ward_.” Hana sings.

“Eyes on the ball, team,” Fareeha sighs, “Lú, do you have sights on the south side? Any suspicious activity?”

“Nothin’ yet,” Lúcio answers, “Where’d you get this intelligence from anyway, big guy?”

“We have Vishkar surveillance to thank for that, actually,” Winston replies crisply, “Look, I’ll check in with you guys in another half-hour. Stay vigilant. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we can get you back in time for dinner. “

“Aw, and I thought we’d get a weekend of sightseeing.” Hana moans.

Winston chuckles before signing off the comm, leaving the three agents – and Vaswani – alone in the voice channel.

Minutes pass. Hana and Lúcio allow themselves some gentle banter over the comm link. As her lookouts, their chat signals to Fareeha that she can loosen up, just for a moment. With the flick of a button on her helmet, her visor lights up with the data tracked by her suit. She glances over the suit’s own stats – still online, still at reasonable fuel levels, no weak spots detected. Her vitals are monitored – normal heart rate, normal temperature, normal respiration rate. Next, she takes a cursory look at the environment – weather conditions, wind speed, temperature-

_BOOM._

The explosion rattles her to the bone and blows her back against the building she’s perched on with enough force that even the Raptora struggles to absorb it.

“…Reeha!” Only the faintest noise from her comm pierces her ringing ears. She lies crumpled, dazed, among scattered flowers and shards of glass. She scrambles to her feet, her suit whirring as it does most of the work. Her vision clears. The explosion had come directly across the street, just below her vantage point.

“-Port your position!”

Adrenaline snaps her into action.

“Lieutenant Amari, Anubis Team, reporting!” Is her automatic reply as she grabs her rocket launcher and instinctively checks the ammo and safety lock.

Something snaps in quick succession. On the road, the unmistakeable flash of gunfire appears – the flashes indicate three attackers, at least that she can see. Individuals from the crowd, caught in the indiscriminate fire, fall to the ground.

Fareeha leaps down from the balcony into the street, taking full advantage of the cushioning of her Raptora suit to land heavily on the road. A young woman, attempting to drag a fallen companion out of harm’s way, is her first point of call. She leaps onto them both, putting her back to the attackers as a shield. Gunfire pelts the carapace of her suit.

“Fucking Vishkar!” She roars into her comm, “The address was for a detonation point, not an arms deal! How the hell do you-“

“Fareeha!” Lúcio barks down the channel, “You know I love talkin’ shit about Vishkar more than anyone, but you gotta give me status-“

“Three gunmen at large! Multiple fatalities!” Fareeha shouts back, trying to be heard over the gunshots, the screaming crowds, the woman howling in panic in her arms. There’s nothing to suggest Fareeha isn’t an attacker herself, she realises. She picks the woman up – she seems too scared to even struggle – and flies with her to an alleyway with a short burst of her rockets.

“Nikos!” The woman is struggling to run back to the man they left in the road. Under the spotlight in the alleyway, Fareeha can see her face better, and concludes she can’t be any older than twenty, “Nikos!”

“No!” Fareeha forcibly pushes her into a hiding spot behind a dumpster, “If he’s alive he’s better off playing dead. You understand?”

The girl only stares up at her, immobilised by Fareeha’s grip on her shoulder, dark hair clinging to a face wet with tears and blood. Whether she’s taking her words in, or even speaks English, Fareeha can’t tell. But the teammates crying down her comm force her to stand, give the girl what she hopes is an affirming nod, before activating her suit and boosting into the air.

She surveys the scene from roof level as she listens to the team over the voice channel.

“With the first casualties,” Lúcio’s voice is tight with focus, sounding more like a running commentary to himself, “Where the hell is Ange when you need her…”

“You’ve got this,” Angela comes through the comm, having tapped through from the Watchpoint while Fareeha wasn’t listening, “Are you safe from the attackers?”

“A temporary barrier is being placed,” Vaswani answers coolly. Sure enough, Fareeha can see a massive wall of hard light extending around the vicinity of the bomb site, flat, glowing hexagons building upon one another to form a curved wall around the area. A calming blue presence next to the gaping fire left by the bomb.

“I have eyes on the gunmen!” Hana cries down the comm. From the metallic quality to her voice, Fareeha can tell she called her MEKA down, “Fareeha! Can you see me?”

Fareeha scans the streets below, which are only just beginning to fill the flashing blue lights of emergency vehicles, making spotting the lights of the mech near impossible. Then, there’s a flash of pink below, and the tell-tale rumble of her boosters.

“I’m with you!”

Fareeha boosts downwards, weaving her way around corners and between vehicles until she reaches the MEKA’s tail. Hana has the assailants cornered, boosters at the ready to pin any who try to escape. Three figures, just as she’d counted, are hidden by shadow in the unlit alley. Fareeha raises her rocket launcher, “All right, drop your weapons.”

The figures do not move. They do not speak. She shifts her launcher in her hands, “I said _drop the guns! Now!_ ”

“Fareeha,” Hana breathes next to her, “I don’t think they can.”

The MEKA’s defence matrix activates, illuminating the figures before them in a sickly green to reveal not humans, but three omnics. And their guns aren’t just guns, but submachine rifles built in place of the bots’ right arms. Fareeha has seen the remains of old Bastion units with a similar design. But these omnics look older even than that, with skeletal forms that shake in rusty joints as they stare back at the two women with nothing but a barely-glowing red light on each of their heads.

Fareeha has seen omnics glow red only once before, and the memory is enough to instinctively make her grab one of the wings of Hana’s mech.

“Um…” The MEKA shrugs slightly as Hana wonders why she just climbed on.

“Get us out,” Fareeha tells her, now noticing the middle omnic begin to shudder.

“What? We-“

The Omnic shakes violently.

“Hana!”

Sparks fly out of its neck.

“ _HANA_ ,” Fareeha slams the chassis with her fist, “ _NOW_!”

The mech flies both women out of range of the omnic’s self-destruct with seconds to spare.

****

The agents meet in the nearest park, which is guaranteed to be deserted after tonight’s events. The four of them hide in the darkness – not before trying to hurriedly find a tree with enough cover to hide Hana’s MEKA, leading her among the shadows like a giant dog on a leash, something that would be humorous under any other circumstance. But there’s only silence between the small group, with nothing but the sound of sirens a few blocks away, and the earthy, sickening tang of blood and ash on their skin.

Fareeha thinks about the young woman she’d rescued – the only person she’d helped, really. Did she stay hidden from the attackers like she’d been ordered to? Or did her fear for her partner make her venture out too soon? What became of the man she was with? Deep down, Fareeha knows. Her eyes had glossed over it at the time, but he had shown a grievous wound on his throat, hollow and oozing. What was the man’s name? Nikos? She mouths it to herself.

Her thoughts are broken by a hand slipping into hers. Her breath catches, even with the contact dampened by the thick gloves of the Raptora suit. She returns its gentle grasp, giving the hand a squeeze – Lúcio’s or Hana’s, she can’t tell. With all three agents and Vaswani sitting around the mech in complete darkness, it’s impossible to see who. And it doesn’t matter. It’s humanity in the most inhuman situation – literally, Fareeha thinks, the red eyes of the omnics still glowing at the front of her mind.

After four hours, Tracer finally touches down in the Aurora. The mech is loaded first, then the agents buckle in for the journey. Hana decides to sit up in the cockpit with Tracer to save room with the MEKA taking up so much space. Lúcio sits next to Fareeha. She wishes he wouldn’t – the bright lights of the plane’s interior reveal the shocking amount of blood that coats his clothes and skin, the metallic stench of it already begins to fill the aircraft. Suffice to say, neither are in the mood for conversation. There’s only the rumble of the engine.

However, after take-off: “Are you hurt?”

Fareeha finally takes notice of Satya, who sits opposite, tapping her prosthetic fingers against her jaw. Fareeha mimics the action, rubs her cheek – glossy shards of dried blood flake off onto her glove. “N-no,” She drops her hand to her side and brushes it off on the seat, “It’s not mine.”

“Oh.” Satya looks away. While her clothes are predictably stained with dirt and grass, she doesn’t look much different except from her hair looking uncharacteristically mussed. Resentment boils in the pit of Fareeha’s stomach at how she can get away with only slightly stained clothes, but she reins it in – what’s Vaswani’s fault here, exactly? What is she supposed to do? Attend to gunshot wounds? Catch hacked omnics with machine gun limbs single-handedly? No one predicted this, particularly not her, who was only there to supervise a simple arms intercept. And she _did_ help, Fareeha scolds herself. She helped enough that it could be seen from a hundred feet up in the sky.

The Aurora is met at the Watchpoint by the rest of the team, who have stayed up to meet them. Angela, protective as always, takes Hana by the hand as Winston, in a rare show of assertiveness, orders the team to get checked over, get showered, and get to bed, in that order.

“Meeting at 11am tomorrow,” He tells them, his yellow eyes resting on the blood that cakes Lúcio’s outfit, enough to completely obscure the frog logo on his tank top, “11am and no earlier.”

Torbjorn, fresh from family leave in Sweden, takes Fareeha inside to help with her armour.

“Gently, gently,” He tells her as she frees herself from the tight shell around her torso. Torbjorn holds it to the light, his one blue eye trained on the damage left by the gunshots that pelted into her back, “Guess yer lucky Helix don’t skimp on materials.”

“Please, not in the mood right now,” Fareeha moans. With her top half now stripped to the black unitard she wears under her suit, she feels her ribs for any tender spots.

“And y’think I’m in the mood to lose you to some crazy bastard with a machine gun?” He tears off a patch of the Raptora’s khaki fabric, sodden with blood, “Well I’ll tell ya this much, sweetheart, we need to work on this suit before you go out there again.”

Fareeha only nods as she steps out of her leg armour. This is the old man’s own way of showing he’s glad she’s okay, but with her suit now removed and not aiding her muscles with extra strength, she realises how bone-tired she really is.

Angela at least has the sense to forgo the usual chitchat, giving her a quick check of her vitals and ensuring there are no injuries before ordering her to the showers.

It’s an order she’s more than happy to follow.

A scalding turn under a showerhead later, and Fareeha retreats to her room. Hana is already there, scrubbed clean, curled up on her top bunk, facing the wall. Fareeha sighs, changing into her usual sleepwear of shorts and an oversized shirt before gently tapping the younger woman’s shoulder.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Just never saw that before.” Hana’s voice has a shake to it that Fareeha has never heard before, “People died all the time in MEKA, but they expected it. We signed up and knew the risk.”

“Yeah,” Fareeha rubs Hana’s shoulder with her thumb.

Hana rolls onto her back. Her eyes glitter as she stares at the ceiling, “I tried to help tonight.”

“I know,” Fareeha tells her. In all honestly, she didn’t see what Hana was doing, far too busy failing to save civilians herself. Maybe Lúcio was quick enough to save some people from the brink of death, but she certainly wasn’t.

“I don’t know how you do that to people.”

“I don’t think they knew what they were doing,” Fareeha brushes back Hana’s bangs – it’s the kind of contact that Jesse used to comfort her with, and she can only hope that this is what a big sister would do. Overthinking the gesture makes it feel empty, lukewarm.

Hana doesn’t answer. Instead, her face contorts into a bitter grimace. She roughly turns over to face the wall again.

“Hana,” Fareeha squeezes her shoulder, “You know they didn’t have control over themselves, right? They didn’t choose to kill those people.”

No answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!! I had a super long hiatus for...reasons and didn't work on this for a long time. I do NOT wanna do that again, and I'll be better about making myself do the work and update more frequently! This is also half of a super long chapter that I'm splitting up, so the next part will be posted very soon. If you're still reading this shit then, holy hell, thanks for waiting.


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